


White Noise

by MarauderCracker



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Bisexual Braeden, Bisexual Kira Yukimura, Bisexual Scott McCall, Bisexual Vernon Boyd, Canon-Typical Violence, Child Abuse (mentioned), Depressed Scott McCall, Mental Health Issues, Multi, No Stiles, Recreational Drug Use, Sense8!AU, bisexual Alan Deaton, child abduction (mentioned), discussions of depression and suicidal ideation, dyslexic Kira Yukimura, hallucinations and unreality, lesbian Allison Argent, lesbian Tracy Stewart, psychotic depressive Tracy Stewart, trans girl Jackson Whittemore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-11-16
Packaged: 2018-04-11 16:01:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4442153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MarauderCracker/pseuds/MarauderCracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There is a bond stronger than blood, than friendship, than family. Across the world, eight people -eight different cities, eight different stories, eight different lives- are born into a new kind of connection. But the link that pulls them together also puts them, and the people they love, in imminent danger.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>[You don't need to watch S8 to understand the plot.]</b></p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Quiet Things

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't watched Sense8, don't worry about not getting what's going on. The story is heavily based on the show's plot, but I won't leave shit unexplained. Do worry about spoilers, though.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prologue: A short glimpse into the lives of our protagonists.

Scott is having one of those Mondays. He doesn't consider himself the kind of person who dreads Mondays --and paying for med school is too expensive for him to allow himself to even complain about it-- but he is dreading this one. He's got four books under his left arm, two coffees on his other hand --one cup pressed between his chest and his wrist, the other firmly held between his fingers-- and his phone is vibrating in his pocket, completely out of reach. The only strap that holds his backpack on his shoulder is about to snap and his new tattoo is itching like a motherfucker. He's not even the kind of person who swears much, but he wouldn't be above yelling " _¡mierda!_ " in the middle of the café right now. He contains himself, though, because it's way too early and he doesn't want to get scolded by Doña Consuelo, the elderly Colombian barista, at five in the morning.

He does let out a couple muttered curses, half in English and half in Spanish, when he steps outside and feels the coffee dripping down his fingers. Turns out the lid doesn't fit the cup properly and, when he pushed the café's door with his shoulder, the movement made the liquid swish. He can't actually wipe it off, so he just prays that it won't keep spilling and rushes towards the hospital.

 

* * *

 

The computer is throwing a hissy-fit again. It's like the millionth issue it's had in the past few weeks (Kira's sure the movers bumped it or something, because it didn't have this many problems back in Seoul), and she's starting to really lose her patience. She taps the camera repeatedly, and it almost falls out of its holder, but the computer still doesn't want to acknowledge it's plugged in. The stupid red light is on, but the dumb thing isn't recording. Kira huffs, stands up and, as she walks towards the kitchen, raises her middle finger in the computer's general direction. Her cat meows, and Kira chooses to take that as some kind of moral support --or as the cat version of a " _yes! fuck you, computer!_ ".

There is leftover pizza in the fridge --one, maybe two days old? three, tops, she's sure of that-- and still-warm coffee in the pot. She jumps to sit on the counter and proceeds to eat cold pizza and drink not-hot-enough coffee with too much sugar, trying not to think about what mom and dad might be having for dinner. She looks out the window. It's almost nine, and Tokyo is brighter at night than it was during the rainy afternoon. Kit jumps from the couch and climbs onto the counter next to her to try and steal the anchovies. 

Kira promises herself she'll Skype her parents tomorrow, if the webcam decides to work. She'll smile and tell them about the nice old lady at the supermarket down the street that has already "adopted" her as a new granddaughter, and that she sold like fifty shirts this week; and will make sure not to give them any reasons to worry about her.

 

* * *

 

Erica's hair is  _everywhere_ , and her soft snores echo through the quiet room. She's still got her earrings on, and they're tangled in her hair in a way that looks a little painful. Isaac has stolen all the blankets during the night and then pushed them aside, making them fall off the bed. He's functioning as a human blanket, though, spread over Boyd's chest and breathing heavily on his neck while his left arm is wound around Erica's waist on the other side of Boyd's body.

The room is way too hot --they probably forgot to turn the heater off-- and the grey-ish light of the early afternoon is shinning through the window. Boyd's head is pounding. For the tenth time in the last three months, he promises himself that he won't let Erica and Isaac drag him out for " _just a pint!_ " ever again. Specially not when he has to explain Marx to a bunch of annoying first-years the next day.

Boyd tries to shift so that Isaac will move away, but only manages to make both him and Erica scoot even closer. He can't actually reach the nightstand to grab his phone without waking at least one of them, but he guesses it's still early enough that he can stay in bed a little longer.  

 

* * *

 

There's a splash of purple in the middle of the canvas and she's not sure she likes it. Most of it is fine --the branches, the light, she actually thinks she got the blues and greens just right-- but the purple just doesn't work. She's considering painting over it --but it might mess up the texture, she tells herself, and holds the brush in the air, just an inch away from the canvas. Yellow would look better here, she thinks, and chastises herself for not realizing it before. The acrylic has already dried up.

The alarm that signals she has to take her meds goes off, but she ignores it. The purple is too dark, that's the problem. The branches were supposed to have an ethereal feeling, like in the-

"Tracy! Your meds!" Caitlin calls from the bathroom. Tracy sighs. She puts the brush down, and moves to press the snooze button. She goes back to staring at the painting, frowning. She hasn't even registered the five minutes passing, too busy convincing herself to not just throw the canvas away, when the alarm starts blaring again. Caitlin calls her name once more. She huffs, but this time does go looking for her meds.

For her last birthday, her flatmate got her a cute, blue container with compartments for each day of the week and each time of the day. She takes the ones from the eight a.m. compartment, and smiles at the cat sticker on the lid. She decides that, even if the painting looks  _absolutely terrible_ , she doesn't want to let it ruin today's good mood. 

"Not trying to butt in or anything, but that would look really good with some pink added to the purple," Caitlin comments. Tracy finishes filling a glass of water and turns around; sees her standing, wrapped in a towel, in front of the painting.

"It would, wouldn't it?"

 

* * *

 

Danny's spent about forty straight hours without sleep. He knows this, because he's seeing the sunrise for what feels like the third time since he last closed his eyes for a reasonable amount of time. It's been three days since he accepted this "silly little job" for Google and by now he's running only on bitter coffee and even more bitter resentment. If he doesn't find a way to break through this stupid firewall in the next five minutes he's going to sell his entire equipment and go sell overpriced flowery necklaces to annoying white tourists back in Hawai'i. That's it. He's never touching another computer in his life.

Just as he's about to close the program and go the hell to sleep, a tiny pop-up announces that he's logged in. He doesn't have the energy to cheer or to rejoice in having beaten such a good security system. He saves a report almost on auto-pilot, closes the program and decides he'll email Google once he's fully functional again, because right now he doesn't think he can explain how to turn on the oven, much less where the weak spot in their new system is.

His last thought before falling asleep is that he had less trouble hacking into the FBI's database when he was fifteen than he did with this. He needs to complain to his best friend about it as soon as he wak...

 

* * *

 

Italian coffee is so good that it almost makes up for Italian traffic. It's hotter than the scalding asphalt of Rome's streets, thick like blood, dark and bitter in a way that no other coffee Allison's ever tried has been. It's almost thirty five Celsius, though it feels like fifty in this crowded little street, and the trees don't offer much shade. She doesn't come to Rome for the coffee or the nice weather, though. She comes for Violet, and Violet is late.

She looks at her phone --the cheap, disposable one she uses for meet-ups-- to check for texts or missed calls again. She sips her coffee, tries to not let the annoyance and anxiety sip into her posture or expression. Nobody will recognize her here, she knows, but she can't help the uneasy feeling. She feels like an easy target, can't help but look up to the colorful balconies and low roofs. Her eyes focus on a silhouette, up on a terrace near the corner. What if...?

"Fa caldo, ¿eh?" Violet's sweet voice interrupts. Allison can feel the tension seeping off her.

 

* * *

 

"D'ya know where I left my dark jeans?" Cora is yelling from her bedroom. She has a class at 10 a.m. and she's not even close to ready, but Derek has decided that he definitely won't tell her where all of her shit is. Maybe that way she'll learn to leave her clothes inside her room, where they belong. "Derek! Did you see them? ¡Por dios!"

He tries to focus on his book. He starts his shift at noon and he'll be standing around like an idiot until midnight, so he really wants to finish this chapter (or the next two or three) before leaving for work. The doctor is trying to decide if he kidnaps his own daughter, maybe losing everything he's ever had in a wild attempt to try an experimental cure for cancer, or if he...

"Derek! I'm going to be late! Didn't you see them? I had my bus pass in there!"

He sighs. Wonders if it would really be that much more expensive to pay for another apartment for Cora, so he wouldn't have to be this mixture of parent, big brother and best friend all the time. He's not cut for socializing too much, and Cora's been in a permanent state of Too Much ever since they moved down here and she finally started feeling comfortable in her skin again. 

"They're on the balcony, you left them there to dry two days ago," he calls. After a couple more seconds of trying to convince himself to be  _stern_ and not do everything for her, he sighs, looks for the traveling cup that Cora always takes to uni and starts brewing some coffee for her.

 

* * *

 

Braeden is thinking of giving up the straightener once and for all. Her hair is frizzy, matted and dirty; she knows it'll be a bitch to wash and brush. She remembers how easy it was to wash her braids after work, but she stopped wearing them years ago. She'd felt like they looked childish, and possible clients had respected her less for them. But who'd accuse her of being unprepared for the job with the scars she sports now? Yeah, she's definitely going back to the braids. As soon as she's done with this fucker. 

"Look, buddy, I don't give a damn about your wife or your kids. You tell me where Don Chávez Manrique is hiding, and I'll let you walk away. You don't tell me, and I'll kill you. It's not that hard a choice."

The man babbles and blubbers. He's got tears running down his face, dried up blood on his beard and the split lip makes him lisp; and the poor bastard keeps hurting himself with the constant straining against the ropes that tie him to the chair. Braeden hasn't even tried her hardest techniques on him, because she's sure that intimidation will be enough to get her what she needs. But, man, she's really starting to lose her patience.

"¡Vamos, hombre! I'm going to kill him anyways, you don't need to worry about what he'll do to you!" she says, almost cheekily. When he starts whimpering and reciting the names of his children again, she decides to give the poor devil a break and looks in her jacket's inner pocket for her phone. Maybe she'll play Candy Crush for a while.


	2. A Motion In The Mind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sensates have their first connection, but not to each other.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: this chapter contains a not-very-graphic but definitely not vague description of a person shooting themselves. If you have watched Sense8, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, well. It's not much worse than anything we've seen on Teen Wolf, really.

"They're doing well, by the way," Violet bites her lower lip, glances down at her phone. She looks up, and there's something apologetic about her expression. "Well, I don't know if you wanted to know, but I guess I'd want to?" She shrugs, wipes away any emotion from her face before continuing. "So, yeah. They're doing well." 

"It's okay. Thank you for telling me," Allison responds. She feels like her heart was ripped out of her chest and then pushed back into place, but no longer fitting quite right. Like it's pushing against her ribs and struggling to make the blood flow properly. She feels homesick. Violet pulls a pack of cigarettes out of her jacket, offers her one. Allison accepts it, thinks of the one photo of her parents she still keeps with her. 

She can almost picture it as she takes the cigarette to her lips and leans closer to Violet so she can light it up. Her mom, twenty something, hair orange and red like the flame coming from Violet's lighter, with a cigarette hanging from her smirking mouth and a gun strapped to her thigh; her dad a couple years younger, without the nasty scar under his eye and all of his hair still that light brown, not even one strand of gray yet, holding a rifle over his shoulder with his left hand and wrapping his right arm around Victoria's waist. Victoria was starting to show signs of her pregnancy, and Chris looked like he'd never seen a more beautiful person in his entire life. They looked young, and in love, and invincible. They looked--

"So, Argent, we need to talk numbers," Violet says, interrupting her reminiscing. 

Allison is glad. She doesn't want to dwell too much on her family and bring back painful memories; though she wishes Violet didn't feel the need to spend all of their time together talking about business. She actually likes the woman, and it's not like any of them has many other "friends" out there. But they both are too reticent to trust other people, too jaded and tired and paranoid to actually let anyone in. She knows this, Violet knows this, and neither of them is willing to take the first step towards an actual friendship. Or whatever else might be there, really.

"I thought we'd already agreed on the value of this info," Allison says, instead of voicing any of her thoughts. Violet smiles. She's gorgeous under the bright sun, with curls falling around her dark face and a flowery yellow sundress that contrasts beautifully against her brown skin and makes her look young and nonthreatening.

"I didn't take into account just how much of a bitch your aunt can be," she says, still grinning. She takes another drag from her cigarette before adding, "I think that alone makes it another grand." 

Allison chuckles, but something distracts her before she can answer. On a first floor balcony across the street, a woman is looking right at her. Allison freezes, tightening her fingers around the cigarette and feeling her whole body tensing with adrenaline. Her mind goes a mile a minute, comparing the bony pale face to every assassin in her family's payroll. 

"Argent? Are you okay?" Violet asks, but Allison doesn't pay her any attention. The woman has a gun in her left hand, but Allison soon realizes she isn't actually pointing it at her or Violet. Her entire body seems to shake as she takes the gun to her chin, and Allison knows that she's too far away to actually hear anything and yet--

" _I'm so sorry, love. I'm so sorry,_ " the woman is saying. Her hands are trembling, Allison realizes, seeing her as if she was zooming in on the small second-story balcony.

Allison can hear the click of the safety being released. She doesn't even register her own movements as she stands up, still looking at the woman, trying to will her to stop just with the intensity of her thoughts. She steps forward, tries to figure a way to get into the building fast enough.

"Allison!" Violet is yelling, pulling at her elbow a second before a truck runs her over. 

The sudden pull and the feeling of the truck speeding by just millimeters from her face (she can hear the driver cussing at her with a strong Sicilian accent) snap her out of it. She looks at a very bewildered and worried Violet, then back at the balcony. 

The woman is no longer there. 

 

* * *

 

Mason is really excited. Maybe it's because they're finally starting their month of psych, and he wants to specialize in psych. Maybe it's because Mason is always excited. Scott likes him, a lot --he makes the hard days easier and the anecdotes he tells about his best friend are always hilarious-- but he's thinking of bringing him decaf from now on.

It's a quarter past six already, and their supervising resident still hasn't shown up. They're checking the progress sheets from their patients, and they can kill time with that for at least ten more minutes anyway, so Scott isn't worrying too much. Plus, the resident --Greenberg is his last name, and Scott can never remember his first name-- is kinda weird and makes a lot of terrible jokes.

"He's the clumsiest person I know, seriously!" Mason is saying, and it's probably the punchline to a very funny story, but Scott's mind is elsewhere. 

He looks at the list of patients, at the little post-it that signals that they have a lesson with the Head of Psych at eleven(" _the freaking Head of Psych!_ " Mason had remarked, excitedly), at the blinking light on his phone that means he's got an unread message. He maybe looks at the light for too long, because his vision starts to blur and everything --his phone, the light, the names on the list-- seems suddenly distant and out of focus. He feels a little dizzy. 

"Scott, are you okay, buddy?" Mason asks, looking worried. 

Scott vaguely thinks that Mason is very perceptive and sensible, and he'll probably be able to tell that he's lying when Scott mutters an affirmation. He looks around at the passing nurses. It's Monday morning and the hospital is always quiet on Mondays, but the silence seems weird today. He feels...

" _Julia! Julia!_ " someone is calling.

Scott turns towards the voice. It sounds wrecked, desperate.

" _Julia, please, don't do this!_ "

"Do what?" Scott asks, confused. 

He can't see the yelling person. It sounds like it's coming from the elevator. 

"Scott?" Mason asks, frowning, but Scott isn't listening. 

He feels a kind of dread, he feels terrified. 

"Who's Julia?" he asks, and this time he doesn't see the way Mason frowns, because he's watching a completely different scene. 

 

* * *

 

Braeden considers herself a merciful person. No, really. She's not cruel unless it's necessary, doesn't enjoy causing pain, avoids killing whenever possible. She knows enough people in this line of work to know that compassion is a rare and precious quality. So, after the man spills just enough information to make all the work worth her time, she gives him some water, unties him and locks him in the room to let him rest. 

She paces around the warehouse while texting her contacts to organize the ambush on Chávez Manrique, thinks about going out for some coffee. She'd have to drive like four miles to the nearest gas station, because this damn warehouse is in the middle of fucking nowhere, so she decides against it. She texts Morrell instead. " _work is a fuckng bitch today. cant evn get coffee. what u up to?_ " 

Morrell (she doesn't know her as anything else than that) takes less than a minute to answer. Talking to her never fails to brighten Braeden's mood, even though she has to keep the conversation as vague as possible so Morrell won't know about her work. 

" _hoping to get out of work soon. trying to get in touch with my big bro but the dumbass won't take my calls_ "

Braeden is thinking of what to answer --she's got family in the States and knows very well the type of worry and fear that comes with missed calls and unanswered texts-- when the sound of hushed voices distracts her. She pulls out her gun with one hand and pockets her phone with the other, ready to fire at whoever's managed to sneak into the warehouse.

"I can't let them get to us," the white woman standing in the middle of the room is saying. 

There's something oddly familiar about her, but she's got a gun tightly clasped in her hand and Braeden doesn't let herself drop her guard despite the overwhelming urge to. Something that she can't quite explain makes Braeden want to lower her gun, but she keeps the barrel firmly pointed at her.

"I can't let them get to them," she insists, talking as if someone was standing right to her left. 

Then, she looks up. Straight at Braeden. 

She wants to move, stop her, jump forward and still her hand as it raises the gun to her chin. She can feel the phone vibrating in her pocket, can feel the weight of her own gun in her hands, the vague ache on her shoulders from holding the revolver so tight. And yet, she can't make herself take a step. The only thing she can do is close her eyes shut when she sees that the woman is about to pull the trigger. The bang never comes, though. When she opens her eyes again, she finds the room empty.

 

* * *

 

Boyd has a class at three, and he's sure he was supposed to grade some papers, because the titular professor definitely won't do it, so all boring duties fall on him; but he can't remember where he left them. Or, actually, where Erica left them, because she's the one who's always moving his things around with no regards to how important they might be. Last week she managed to lose half of his hand-written notes for the thesis, and it took three days until they found them inside a cupboard. Boyd can almost hear her saying "Who the fuck keeps hand-written notes anymore? Come on!" in that tone she uses when she wants to say she's sorry but can't help getting defensive. She did say sorry, after they found them. The very next day, she borrowed Isaac's phone charger without asking and then left it at a bar, but the charger wasn't as vital. 

He's checking inside that same cupboard, just in case, when he hears a crash and loud steps. He turns around, expecting to see Erica and Isaac stumbling into the kitchen together, but the hallway is still silent and dimly lit, all doors closed. Maybe it was someone on the next floor? he thinks, but goes to check on them anyways.

They all crashed on Boyd's bed last night and, when he pushes the door open, he sees the two of them have managed to not only occupy the space Boyd left when he got up, but also throw the pillows onto the floor. Aside from that, it doesn't seem like they've moved at all. Boyd decides to leave the door open, to see if the smell of coffee eventually wakes them up. 

He's opening the kitchen drawers --trying to figure out who left a box of condoms there-- when he hears the footsteps again. More rushed, this time. He's sure they aren't from upstairs --he can hear someone panting, an unintelligible whisper. Boyd turns towards the hallway again, but it's still empty. 

"I'm sorry, darling. I'm sorry," comes from his left.

He turns again, this time towards the bathroom door, maybe expecting to find a burglar. But the white door isn't there at all. He feels his feet sinking into wet grass. 

 

* * *

 

For a second it seems like the lights of Tokyo's buildings blink off and on again. Kira shakes her head, worried that not having eaten anything other than vaguely stale pizza since last night might be the reason for her dizziness. Kit stops purring, meows and then nudges her palm. 

"It's okay, baby, I'm just tired," she tells her, smiling. 

The cat looks skeptical. 

Kira tries plugging and un-plugging the camera again. She's reinstalled the drivers at least five times in the last twenty minutes, but the dumb machine refuses to work, and she definitely doesn't want to buy a new webcam.

"Hop'ung!" she mutters, and closes everything before she has a chance to start trying again and ends up staying up all night.

She has a strong tendency to forget that time is passing and, now that Mom isn't knocking on her bedroom door at one in the morning, her sleep schedule is pretty messed up.

The screen is showing the light-blue image that appears right before the system shuts off, when the lights blink again. This time, it's not just one light: her apartment goes entirely dark for a second, and when the lights come on again, she hears a voice.

" _Julia! Julia, please! There has to be another way!_ " a voice calls, in English.

Kira looks at the computer's speakers, but they're turned off. The screen buzzes slightly before finally going totally black.

Kira turns around slowly. Maybe Kit stepped on her phone and accidentally opened the radio app? she wonders, but a feeling of uneasiness is settling low in her gut. Kit is sleeping over her sewing machine, and the phone's screen is off. 

" _Please, please, please. I won't let them get to you, love,_ " the voice is saying. It sounds like a woman, it sounds like she's been crying. She speaks with a California accent like the movies Kira likes, and she's sure the sound is coming from the speakers. It has to be. 

She turns back towards the computer, and the chair creaks a little with the sudden movement, but the speakers are still off. She sees her own reflection on the screen. She looks scared. And then, Kira sees her face morph into another. 

 

* * *

 

Danny can't really tell what woke him up. He reaches for his phone, and sees that not even an hour has passed since he went to bed. He still feels awfully tired, but there is something that just won't let him turn around and go back to sleep. It's probably the mix of energy drinks, coffee and too much time spent in front of the blue light of the screen --Danny really needs to reinstall that red filter, because he refuses to change his glasses prescription again.

The blinds are shut and the morning sun filtering through the cracks doesn't really bother him, but he turns around and hides his face under the pillow anyway. He tries to even out his breathing and clear his mind, keeps his eyes shut, keeps focusing on his breathing... But there's no point. Danny's not a patient person, not even when it comes to sleeping. He grabs his phone thinking of checking the time, but ends up going through his notifications instead. There's a text from Lydia --"please tell me you went to sleep"--, a couple unopened snapchats from various friends, emails about a few other small jobs he can probably get done this week, Facebook notifications. By the time he's gone through them all, he feels even more tired, and yet more awake, than before.

He texts Lydia back --" _finlly beat googles new security system. ws scared theyd invented a code that was rly smarter thn me. tried to sleep, failed. y r you awake?_ "-- and scrolls through his Twitter feed for a minute before getting bored.

He's sitting up, pushing the sheets away --has just decided to finally try one of those pretentious-sounding teas that Lydia got him for his birthday, like, nine months ago--, when he sees someone standing at the bedroom door. There's barely any light coming through the kitchen, but he can see a person in a long dark coat --too heavy for the L.A. heat-- with their back back to him. Their long, dark hair is moving, as if there was wind blowing. He stands up carefully, trying not to make any noise, and starts dialing nine-one-one. He doesn't press 'call' yet, though.

He steps close enough to hear the person speaking, guesses they might be a woman. 

"He's coming, Alan. I can feel him," she's saying, scared but determined. "I need you to promise me that you'll take care of Kali. You won't let anything happen to her," she says, voice trembling. Danny can almost feel her fear, her worry.

He forgets about the phone. Danny's had this happen before, anyway: people showing up at his house in the middle of the night saying " _I'm being followed because I leaked confidential information,_ " or " _someone gave me your address, told me you used to be a hacktivist._ " People running away from an abusive family or the cops, hackers from underground organizations and old colleagues turn up at Danny's door all the time. True, not many of them break into his kitchen, apparently talking to thin air at six in the morning, but Danny is tall and strong, and this person doesn't look all that threatening.

"Hey," he calls, trying to keep his voice soft as he steps even closer. 

The intruder doesn't seem to hear him. She keeps muttering the same things over and over, sounding more frantic as the seconds go by. 

"You don't understand how powerful they are, Kali. If you go after them..." the woman says as she turns to her left, and Danny can see her profile. 

She looks sick, emaciated and tired, with dark bags under her eyes and skin so pale Danny can see her veins. 

"Alan, don't let her do anything stupid," she says.

Danny steps even closer to the door, now standing almost next to the stranger, so close he could touch her shoulder to get her attention. Instead, he follows the direction of her eyes, expecting to find nothing more than his fridge. He sees a man instead.

 

* * *

 

"Trace, I'm off! Want me to bring ya anything when I come back?" Caitlin asks, while she's finishing folding her apron and tucking it in her backpack. Tracy always answers that she's okay, doesn't need anything, but Caitlin still asks every time.

"I'm fine! Get going, or you're going to be late," she replies, turning away from the painting to wave at her friend as she opens the door. "Don't fall asleep in class again!"

Cait flashes a smile her way and closes the door behind her, and Tracy turns back to her work. She wants to get at least the background done before leaving. Her shift at the bakery starts at noon, but she's actually content with the idea of going to work today, and the slashes of green and yellow flow easily from her wrist to the brush and onto the canvas. 

She's thinking about trying to wake up this early more often --trying not to get herself down instantly with the knowledge that she probably won't be able to-- when something distracts her. She stops mid-movement, brush hovering over the mug with dirty water; her other hand next to her temple, where she was going to fix the loose strands of hair.

The apartment is quiet in a way that’s making her uneasy. Not the usual not-really-silence of loud Mexican telenovelas that the old lady upstairs loves, or the constant drip-drop from the water leak in the bathroom; but something heavier, colder. It feels like she's in one of her nightmares --like the air is too dense and nothing can move in it.

The silence is broken by a loud click. Tracy almost jumps out of her skin, the brush slips from her fingers as she startles and turns around. She looks at the bathroom door, the colorful curtain that separates their beds from the rest of the apartment, the messy kitchen. Everything is still, and yet she's sure that something has moved --like all the furniture shifted a centimeter to the left, like the sun moved suddenly on the sky and the new angle of the light pushed all the shadows closer to the floor.

A man's voice comes from somewhere --the emergency stairs outside the kitchen window? the hall?-- with an accent that she can't really identify.

" _You've always been the bravest of us all, Julia,_ " the man is saying. He sounds as calm and neutral as possible, and yet somehow Tracy can tell that he's in pain.

Already sure that this is a bad idea, she walks towards the hallway door and unlocks it.

 

* * *

 

The apartment is finally quiet. Cora stormed off ten minutes ago, yelling "thanks for the coffee!" on her way out; and Derek has just finished picking up the trail of books and clothes she left across the house and throwing the pile back on her bed. God, Derek almost misses the bitchy, closed off, low profile teenage Cora during days like this. Okay, he doesn't (he knows they were both at a terrible place before and that Cora being loud and messy and childish means she's doing better), but he does wish she would stop leaving her underwear everywhere.

He sits back on the couch, picks up his book and tries to find the line where he left off. The doctor has decided to get his daughter out of the hospital, though he knows it could ruin his career, and Derek immediately gets pulled back into the story. He tries to read at a calm pace, but his eyes keep on drifting to the next paragraph, trying to take a peek and discover if the doctor will get caught.

He's clutching the book with both hands, leaning closer to the page and squinting a little --he really needs to get reading glasses-- when the sound of people yelling practically makes him jump out of the couch. 

Derek stands up, holding the book open with one hand while he steps closer to the hallway door.

The only other person living on this floor is a really old man who doesn't do much aside from drinking mate, scolding his cat and muttering obscenities at the newspaper every morning. It's rare to hear any loud noises at all, but now there are feet rushing up the hallway and what sounds like multiple men talking over each other. They're speaking in English, and Derek can recognize the short words and barked commands that are usual in military-trained men.

"Don't let them in," someone says --in English, again, and Derek hasn't spoken to anyone who uses English in their daily life, outside of Cora, in literal years-- and Derek turns to his left, startled. 

A man about his height, dark-skinned, surely older than him, is standing right next to Derek. He looks dirty and tired, there's blood on his clothes and Derek can see a scar that runs up the side of his head, right behind his ear.

"They can't get to her," he insists, and he has a Californian accent and he is bleeding in Derek's apartment in Montevideo, and yet Derek feels compelled to trust him.

"Who's she?" he asks, and follows the man's sight towards the middle of his living room. 

Except it's not his living room anymore. The severed trunk of a tree occupies the place where his coffee table should be, and two women are sitting on top of it. One of them with flowery tattoos running up her dark arms and tears running down her face, clinging to the other --thinner, paler-- woman. They look even more tired than the man. The white woman looks like she's been crying too and, when she looks up at them --at the man standing next to Derek-- he can tell that she doesn't have any more tears in her. He can feel, clear as if the hollowness that fills her was beating in his own chest, that she's cried herself out.

"If they get to her, we're all lost," the man says, and Derek knows that he's a part of that "we".


	3. Roots In The Brain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two weeks later, the sensates are still reeling from what they witnessed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: 
> 
> Mentions of depression and a really passing mention of suicidal ideation in part I.  
> Hot make outs in part III (y'know, to keep the Sense8 vibe).  
> Talks of mental illness (and Ugly Betty spoilers) in part IV.

"Honestly, every time someone talks so... what's the word? Like, so calm about the earthquakes I get more and more paranoid," Kira says, and Harley laughs. The image lags for a second --Harley's connection is terrible-- and Kira takes the chance to switch to another window and check if she's got any email.

"Ugh, I hate this, sorry. I miss Seoul's wi-fi so much. Whatcha doin'?"

"Hoping that any of the places I sent my resume to will email me back," Kira answers, switching back to the Skype conversation so she can look at Harley. The video is pixelated and low quality, and Kira can barely guess the shape of the trees behind her friend. She's always wanted to visit Florida, and actually get to meet Harley's family, but most of her savings went into the move to Tokyo and now she has to start her "Annoy Harley In Real Life" fund all over.

"Don't worry, dumbass, you're going to find a job in no time. And it's going to be a really cool job, too," Harley reassures her. Kit starts clawing at Kira's leg, and Kira almost misses Harley's mocking grin when she says "You should totally apply to be a video game tester!" in her attempts to push the cat away.

A woman yelling "Rebecca!" can be heard through the speakers, and Harley calls back a "What?!" so loud that it startles both Kira and Kit. The cat meows and runs away from the computer.

"Can you grab your sister?" Harley's mom calls. Harley looks at Kira, rolls her eyes and tells her "Be right back!" before moving the computer off her lap and walking off screen. Kira goes back to Illustrator, where she'd been messing around with a shirt design. It's coming out ugly as hell, and she feels tempted to just delete the file and start over tomorrow.

"Say hi, hi Kira," Harley's voice comes from the speakers. When she opens the conversation again, a tiny girl is smiling at her from Harley's lap.

"Hi, Jackie," Kira says, and the girl waves with both her hands.

"Kira taught me how to speak Korean," Harley tells her little sister, and Jackie seems delighted by that. "Do you want to show Kira the words I taught you?" Harley prompts, speaking softly. The little girl looks at Kira again, grinning, and babbles something that, Kira guesses, is supposed to be "annyeong". Kira smiles at her.

"You speak great!" Kira tells her, and Jackie hides her face behind her hands. She's wearing her hair in tiny braids with colorful beads decorating the tips --she looks exactly like the childhood pictures of her big sister-- and the braids fall over her face too. Even with the bad image, Kira can still tell that the girl is trying to look at her through her fingers.

She's going to ask Jackie if she knows any other Korean words when she remembers why she called Harley in the first place. She always does this --calls her parents to tell them about the job offers she found and instead ends up discussing the latest episode of their favorite drama with dad all the goddamn time-- but at least this time she actually remembered before ending the conversation. "I had to tell you something important," she says, this time in Korean. Harley leans closer to the computer, instantly looking more attentive, because they only use Korean when Harley wants to practice or when they want to keep their chats private. Kira guesses that her face says "I really need to keep this between us" more than clearly, because Harley seems a little worried.

"Everything good?" she asks, and the accent she'd lost during her two years in Seoul has come back in full force now. Kira tries to look unconcerned --wasn't that the word she was looking for earlier?-- though she knows she's a terrible liar.

"Something weird happened to me. Around two weeks ago, I think?" Harley hums, looking even more worried, and little Jackie looks very interested and very confused. Kira wants to tell Harley that it's no big deal, tell her to forget it, but she's been going over this for almost two weeks now and she really needs to talk to someone. "I had this, uh," she doesn't want to say 'hallucination', doesn't feel like 'dream' fits either. 

"I saw a woman kill herself," Harley's eyes open wide open at that, and Kira raises her hands, holds them in the air to signal Harley that she's not done. "Not in reality! Like, she was here," Kira waves her arm towards the small open space between her desk and the kitchen counter, "but she wasn't. And I know it wasn't real but I don't think I imagined it either."

"You mean," Harley catches herself talking in English and switches back to Korean, "like some sort of Astral Projection?"

"Astral Projection sounds pretentious and dumb," Kira says, frowning. She knows Harley doesn't mean it that way, but it does. "White woman, maybe in her forties. She spoke in English, and she had an American accent," Kira tells her. It's useless information, details about someone who doesn't even exist. And yet, "I felt like I knew her."

 

* * *

 

The book Boyd had been reading falls to the floor with a loud thump, and Erica laughs. "Sorry," she says, still grinning, and Boyd rolls his eyes at her. She's got her hands under Boyd's shirt and a glint in her eyes that says he's not going to be able to finish the chapter anytime soon. Erica's nails are a little too long, and shivers run down his spine when she drags them up his abdomen.

"You need to ree-eelax," she says, leaning her forehead against his. He smiles as she leans down to kiss him, slow and deep and calming. He's been on edge all week, looking over his shoulder at all times, constantly feeling like someone's watching him. And he knows that Erica and Isaac have noticed, but they probably were waiting for him to talk about it. But he didn't want to worry them, and he wasn't even sure that--

Erica sucks on his tongue and the thought vanishes from his mind. She's straddling his hips, attempting to push Boyd's shirt up even though she's got her chest pressed tight against his, and Boyd would comment on how impractical she's being if she wasn't running her tongue against the roof of his mouth.

"I'm feeling left out," Isaac complains, stepping into the room with a bottle of beer in hand and an exaggerated pout on his face. Erica bites at Boyd's lower lip and lets her teeth drag against the soft skin as she leans back.

Isaac leaves the beer on top of Erica's dresser and reaches for the hem of his shirt just as Boyd moves his hands from Erica's waist to the zipper at the back of her dress. Once it's unzipped, she pulls it over her head and throws it in her closet's general direction. Isaac's jeans hit the floor at about the same time as the dress.

The bed dips with Isaac's weight when he kneels on it, shifting a little before dropping face-first on the mattress. "God, that was the most boring thing I've watched in my life. Remind me why I ever take movie recs from you," he complains, turning his head to the side so his words won't be muffled by the pillows. Boyd chuckles, throws him an amused grin.

"Because you keep forgetting you hate French films?" he offers. It comes out breathless, the way his voice always gets when any of them sucks at the pulse point under his jaw. Erica runs her tongue down to the hollow space between his collarbones, he gasps when she sucks there.

She finally manages to get him out of his shirt, and Boyd kisses her as soon as the fabric is out of the way, pulls her closer with an arm around her waist and Erica easily shifts until she's pressing flush against him. Her tongue teases the sensitive flesh under his; the riveted hems of her bra tickle against his chest, the wet fabric of her panties leave a spot on his sweatpants as he pushes up against her.

Boyd can tell that Isaac is shifting and moving next to him, but Erica's hair obstructs any view he could have. He kisses what's left of her fruity lip-gloss off her mouth, licks along her lower lip and she pants against his mouth. She pushes him back against the headboard, and pulls away to get rid of her bra.

"Hey, I can almost see a hickey," Isaac comments, and Boyd turns to see him grinning --now sitting up next to him-- while palming over his boxers at his own erection. Boyd's always extra grateful for his own dark skin when he sees the dark marks Erica leaves on Isaac's pale neck, though Isaac never seems to care. He lets go of Erica's waist so he can shift his body to the side. Isaac tilts up his chin, still smiling as his lips part a little, but Boyd avoids his mouth and kisses his jaw instead.

Just out of the corner of his eye, he sees a man standing at the door, dark eyes looking straight at him --he feels like, if he tried to call his name, he'd know it. Boyd closes his eyes for a few seconds, breathing shakily against Isaac's skin and, when he looks again, the man is no longer there. Isaac is looking up at him, Erica drags her nails down his arm.

"You okay?" Isaac asks. Boyd grins, moves so he's speaking almost into Isaac's mouth.

"Never better."

 

* * *

 

"I'm not going," Tracy yells over the sound of the bell ringing. Caitlin glares at her, and Tracy puts on her most innocent smile. "But I can get the soda and napkins?" she offers, even tries to flutter her eyelashes (she fails, but it makes Caitlin laugh). Cait moves to pause the episode of Ugly Betty they're watching, and they both stand from the couch.

"Okay. Ya got two bucks to tip the delivery person?" 

They dig through their pockets and bags to find enough money to pay for the delivery and leave a decent tip, and Caitlin gives Tracy the finger as she walks out the apartment, leaving the door open behind her. She makes a lot of noise as she rushes down the stairs, and Tracy can hear her tripping, hitting something and cursing loudly about two floors down. She goes to get glasses, forks and something to drink.

Their "coffee table" is made out of an old wooden door resting on top of three empty paint buckets (the buckets were stolen by Tracy when she was still at art school, Cait found the door on her way home from work one day). Tracy pushes Caitlin's computer to the side and places a pile of napkins, the two glasses, the forks and the bottle of Coke over a some discarded sketches.

"We need to find another Thai place," Caitlin announces, slamming the door shut when she walks in. Tracy almost jumps out of her own skin, and Cait looks apologetic as she sits down next to her. "Sorry, babe," she mutters, and Tracy smiles at her. Caitlin puts the boxes on the table. "Every fucking time they send this dumbass he spends an hour staring at my tits," she complains, and Tracy grimaces. "Maybe I can ask them to only send Lauren? Lauren is cool."

"Lauren is hot and you don't mind if she stares at your tits," Tracy jokes, and Caitlin laughs --though she doesn't deny it. Instead, she hands Trace the box with her Kaeng Ho, puts her feet on Tracy's lap and stretches to press play on the computer.

They watch in silence for a while. Tracy's got her food balanced between Cait's calf and her own chest, so she can hold the fork with one hand and draw little eights on Caitlin's ankle at the same time.

"Oh, my God!" Caitlin exclaims suddenly. They're watching Hilda and Santos being disgustingly cheesy (this show is funny and cute but the romantic story-lines always make Tracy a little uncomfortable), and Caitlin is looking sad now. "I just remembered what happens after this, God," she says, and rushes to pause the show again. Tracy looks at her, eyebrows raised in a silent question. "Okay, so, big spoilers, but you'll probably wanna know..." Caitlin bites her lip, clearly apologetic about having forgotten.

"Just tell me!" Tracy tells her, because suspense makes her catastrophize, even if that clearly isn't Cait's intention.

"So, all of this is... I don't know, a dream?" she frowns, looks at the scene happening on screen. Santos' got a bandage around his chest, but he's smiling at Hilda like he's never been happier. "Santos is dead."

Tracy knows that Caitlin is probably thinking about Tracy's parents when she makes this warning, but they're not the first thing in her mind. She thinks of the woman in black instead --the first vivid hallucination she's had in almost two years. She hasn't told anyone about it, though, not outside of her therapist. She swallows down the knot forming at her throat, shrugs. "It's fine. Thank you for telling me."

They get back to the show and the food. When it's revealed that Hilda had been dreaming all along, Tracy tenses up a little, but Caitlin scoots closer and wraps her fingers around Tracy's wrist. She doesn't think of the apparition in her hallway for the rest of the night.

 

* * *

 

He always feels like he got beat up by the time he gets home. Scott loves what he's doing --he loves it even more now that he actually gets to be in the hospital, talk to the patients, really help people-- but he's so fucking tired. He's still working four hours at the bar every night, instead of the seven hour shifts he used to take while still on the theoretical years, making him the only student in his group who works at all.

Every day he gets out of the hospital, changes out of his scrubs in one of the public restrooms in the gas station nearby, and grabs the bus downtown. By the time he arrives to The Basement, he's already tired.

When he gets off, after four hours of serving beer to racist rednecks who call him _"chico_ " with mocking edges to their voices, he wants to die. Some days more literally than others.

"Are you okay, buddy?" his roommate asks. Scott could barely will himself to close the door behind him, but didn't make it any further inside the apartment. He just dropped his backpack on the floor and leaned his weight against the door, head tipped back, eyes closed.

Brett looks pretty worried when Scott manages, after a good ten seconds of struggling, to open his eyes again and shift his head the bare minimum required to look back at him. He's about to say "yeah" or maybe "just tired" when Brett talks again.

"When was the last time you slept for more than two hours?"

Scott thinks that if Brett is worried, it probably means he should worry too. Not that Brett is careless or never notices anything, but he's usually too busy studying, lifting weights, getting high, or making a big fuss about his own problems to get involved with whatever is happening to Scott.

"You look like you're about to collapse, dude," he's saying, and Scott lets himself be tugged into the apartment.

The effort required to sit, instead of letting himself fall face-first on their ratty couch, makes all of his muscles hurt. Brett looks like he's not too used to being careful with people and is regretting even asking what was wrong; and Scott wants to tell him to let it go, go back to whatever he was doing, but then it happens again.

He closes his eyes for just a second and, when he opens them, he can't see Brett anymore.

He's in the middle of the woods, now sitting on the edge of a huge tree stump. It looks old, and Scott guesses it must have been giant when it was cut --it's almost perfectly round and big enough that a dozen people could use it as a table comfortably. The others around it are pines, tall and thin, stretching their branches against the bright full moon.

It takes Scott a minute to see them. Sometimes, he hears them or sees them first; other times, his eyes are drawn by the haunting scenery. He's been here before, dozens of times. They've been here before. Scott guesses that they come often, maybe every day. They don't always come together, but he only sees them if the man is here, never sees the woman alone. They're mourning --Scott can feel the grief pulsing at the back of his head, even when he's not here.

Scott looks at the blood stains on the wood, at the woman --he knows her name by now, the man calls her Kali-- looking at the blood stains in the wood. She looks devastated. She looks vengeful. She snarls at the man when he tries to calm her, snatches her hand away. He feels like the moon over their heads blinks off, and he's back at the apartment.

"Scott, hey, hey," Brett is saying. He's got a glass of water in his hand and he looks unsure of whether he should offer it for Scott to drink or throw it at his face. "Man, please don't die in the apartment. You know how hard it'll be to find another roommate if you die here? And I really can't afford this apartment by myself."

Scott actually laughs at that, but throwing his head back so fast makes him dizzy. He's been like this for two weeks, and none of his books seem able to provide any type of reasonable diagnosis. He doesn't tell Brett this, though.

"I guess psych is turning out to be harder than I expected," he says instead, and it's not even a lie. He's usually one of the best students in his group, but his poor work during these past couple weeks has convinced Doctor Finstock that he's absolutely useless.

He wants to say something else, but he doesn't really know how to word something like this. Scott's never really told anyone --aside from his mom and the therapist he used to see during high school--about his depression, but depression doesn't cause vivid hallucinations.

"Maybe I'm coming down with something," he says instead.

Brett doesn't look all that convinced, but he gets to cooking actual food instead of trying to get him to say anything else. Scott wants to joke about how it's the first time in almost two years of living together that Brett has cooked anything aside from hot-dogs and ramen, but he doesn't have the energy. He accepts the plate that Brett hands him --"seriously, if you die in my apartment I'm going to kill you, eat something!"-- and only eats half of it before he gives up and just goes to sleep.

 

* * *

 

Allison gets out of bed slowly. She picks up her underwear, puts on her shirt as she makes her way around the room. She picks a phone from the nightstand --not hers, though-- and presses the 'unlock' button. It asks for a security pattern, but she'd been watching its owner earlier, memorized it easily. Virginia is tangled up in the sheets, sleeping deep and easy like Allison hasn't allowed herself to in years. She looks for her own number in the contact list and deletes it. It's her secondary number, but she's still careful about leaving any tracks.

She tries to change her handwriting a little when she scribbles a quick apology note to Virginia. She invents a family emergency, hopes that they will meet up again sometime. It's a lie, of course, but she wishes it wasn't --they've only known each other for a couple days, but Virginia is gorgeous and hilarious and likes all of Allison's favorite poets, and Allison's been aching for a long-lasting relationship for years.

She doesn't let herself think too much about it. She focuses on the feeling of loosened muscles, the skin that's still a little oversensitive, on the way her lips feel tender and she's still got Virginia's taste lingering under her tongue, the smell of her shampoo everywhere. She glances back at Virginia, then locks the door. The room's been paid in advance, and Allison makes her way through a service exit, far from any cameras.

She pulls her phone out, lets her fingers linger over the 'message' icon. She locks it again, drops it back into her pocket and hurries her walk. She has to take a train to Paris at dawn, then another one to Amsterdam at noon.

It's still too hot for Allison's liking, though it's almost four in the morning. She makes her way to the hostel through deserted streets and dark alleys. It's a small, not-too-clean place known for never asking for ID --unlike the elegant hotel where she ended up at with Virginia-- but she only needs to pick up one small bag from there. Most of her things are stashed in the trunk of a car parked in a private garage near the limits of Vatican City, and she has to walk a lot.

It takes her almost twenty minutes to get to the hostel, and the lady at the front desk barely looks at her as she makes her way in. The room she's been staying in is small, with wet spots in the walls and a single light that flickers constantly, but Allison's documents are safely stashed in the administration's safe.

She asks the woman --her name is Ramona and she's been reading the same astrology magazine every night that Allison's stayed here-- to get her things, and pays for the last night. It's ten to five when she gets back to the street.

She walks with the duffel bag where she carries most of her belongings hanging from her left shoulder and tries to dig through it without actually looking. As the feels around for her passport --the fake one, of course-- she finds Violet's cigarettes. The box is a little wrinkled from spending two weeks squished between clothes, books and guns, but the cigarettes look intact.

She thinks of Violet --of her carefully unconcerned tone as she said "you look like you could use a smoke, Argent; keep them," of the sunlight in her hair as she walked away-- and thinks of the woman on the balcony. There's a Bic lighter inside the cigarette box, too. She brings one cigarette to her mouth, holds it between her teeth as she keeps looking for the damn passport, and stops her walk under a street lamp so she can look inside the bag. She finds the passport stuck between the pages of the pulp novel she's been reading, and pulls it out with a huff.

"Zut!" she mumbles, sinking her teeth in the cigarette's filter. She stuffs the passport in her pants pocket, closes the bag and finally lights the cigarette. The smoke makes her throat burn a little --it feels great.

She's turning a corner --humming a song she likes, cigarette held loosely between her fingers, almost relaxed-- when she realizes she's being followed.

 

* * *

 

As he walks up the stairs --the lift's been broken for like a week now and, even with his admittedly great physical state, Derek's getting tired of having to climb the same seven floors every damn day-- he hears his neighbor talking to someone. He's probably trying to convince Cora to take out the garbage in exchange for torta fritas, because he's got awful arthritis and all the stairs must be hell for him.

Most of the building's tenants are old people with little or no family, and Derek thinks he could probably take advantage of his 'faux-intimidating guard looks' --as Cora puts it-- and try to convince the owner to hurry up and get the damn thing fixed soon. He knows he has a pretty scary scowl, and the owner is a short, balding man who wouldn't even win a fight against Cora. Actually, Cora is a better fighter than Derek, but--

"Ugh, I'm sorry... ¿Soy...? No, shit, ¿estoy? Estoy buscando por--no, that's not it. Buscando a..."

As Derek steps into the hallway, he can see the people talking. His neighbor is indeed there, holding his cat up in his arms while he looks at the girl standing in front of him with a vaguely amused expression. She's standing with her back to Derek, and all that he can see is her hair and clothes --and the way she waves her hands around, seeming to grow more and more anxious the longer she struggles with the language barrier.

She's got short, sandy hair and a huge green jacket that looks old and dirty. It almost covers her shorts completely --they've got the American flag stamped on them; which almost makes Derek laugh-- though she's got her legs bare. Her boots look as dirty as her jacket, held together with tape where the left heel is about to fall off. Derek is thinking that it's definitely not hot enough for shorts when he hears his name.

"Hale, estoy buscando a Cora and --sorry-- y Derek Hale," she says, and Derek sees his neighbor's smile brighten. He stops petting his cat so he can raise his hand and point right over the girl's shoulder, to where Derek is standing. The girl turns around so fast that her hair whips against her face, and she stands there, looking at Derek like she's considering fleeing.

"Los dejo solos, niños," the old man says, and the cat meows as they both make it back inside their apartment. The door closes behind him, and Derek raises his eyebrows, waiting for the girl to say something.

"God, please tell me you speak English," is what she says, and Derek can't help but smile at her. "Yeah," he says, and she sighs in relief. He steps a little closer --still at arms length, but now he can tell that she looks tired and weary, and he notices there's a backpack laying near the wall-- still expecting an explanation.

"Look, I..." she's obviously trying to look self-assured, but failing spectacularly. It reminds Derek of a younger Cora, the way she squares up her shoulders and raises her chin before speaking. "I'm Peter's daughter."

For a moment, the words don't mean anything to Derek. He thinks, "Peter? Who's Peter?" as his eyes search over the girl's expectant face. The light hair, the sharp eyes, the expressive eyebrows. It takes him a while until the pieces click, until one particular face comes to mind. "Peter... Hale?"

She nods, looking a bit exasperated. "I'm your cousin, dumbass. My name is Malia."

Derek thinks of just turning around and walking out of the building, maybe calling the cops. Instead, he invites her into his apartment, offers her tea and asks what the fuck is going on.

"What the fuck is going on?"

Malia laughs at him, but it's tired and weary and a little sad. She's crouched over herself, holding the mug with both hands, elbows digging into her thighs. "Do you want the long version, or the short version?"

Derek asks for the long version. It takes Malia an hour and a half to tell it. She begins with "actually, my last name is Tate, my mom gave me up for adoption." She's got papers to prove it, wrinkled documents and adoption forms that she pulls out of her bag an hands to Derek --though he's sure he wouldn't be able to tell if they were fake.

Cora gets home when she's only a few words in, but her reaction to Malia's reveal is smoother than Derek's. "Weirder shit has happened to us," she says, shrugging. "I imagine there's a reason you're all the way down here, right?" Cora says, keeping it as light as possible, and Malia smiles at her.

She tells them about her family --about her mom, her little sister, the car crash that killed them both and almost killed Malia, too. Her eyes get a little wet when she talks about them, about her dad, about the years she spent apart from him. Cora scoots closer then, puts a hand on her shoulder. Malia explains that the car crash happened a couple cities away from home, near the woods, and she was assumed dead. She'd been nine years old back then, and had walked away from the place of the accident before any authorities could find the wrecked car.

"I was lucky, though," she says, and shrugs, "I mean, I could'a had worse luck." She tells them about her childhood and adolescence going from squat houses to shelters, about short but always terrible stays in orphanages before she ran away again, about living under bridges and in abandoned construction sites. And she smiles when she tells them about finding her dad again --even though it was hard and she hated spending so much time in therapy and she often wanted to leave again.

"And then Peter showed up, and everything went to hell," she says, bitterness in her voice. "He said he never wanted to give me away, that he wanted a chance to be a part of my life. I didn't really care for it, but he was..." She makes a face, "insistent."

Derek can imagine Peter --older than he remembers him, probably-- the charming smiles and fake sadness and endless manipulation. Malia doesn't look like the fragile kind, but neither were Mom or Laura and yet he managed to drag them all down. They would all be alive, they would all be unscarred if it wasn't for him.

"He wasn't looking for a loving daughter or any of that bullshit, though," Malia says, jaw tight, brow furrowed. "He thought I could have information on you? He was convinced that I had to know... what was her name? Laura. He was sure that she had been speaking to me."

"What does he want us for?" Cora asks, always sharper than Derek --it's past midnight, he's never sharp past midnight. Malia looks at them, chews on her lower lip for a second.

"I think he's after the Hale money."

 

* * *

 

"Oh, muchísimas gracias," Braeden smiles at the barista as she receives her coffee. She drops the change in her pocket in the tip jar, and waves at the staff with her free hand before walking out of the small coffee shop. She's been at the border for a couple days already --lazing around, eating way too many tacos and waiting around for a call that'll make her decide whether she wants to stay in the States or go looking for better jobs down in Central America.

Her last client gave her a gorgeous new revolver and a box of cigars along with her payment. She's got the revolver back in the hotel --it's pretty, but too light for her taste--, but the cigars are in her jean's thigh pocket. It's hot but dry outside, and she soon finds a bench to sit down at.

She takes her coffee sweet --too sweet--, with a bunch of creamer and enough cinnamon to make some people nauseous. The warmth of the drink makes her even hotter, and she wishes she'd changed into some shorts before leaving the hotel. She's used to the heat, though, and her newly-braided hair is held up high with a wrap that keeps her fresh and comfortable. She hopes it'll get a little colder later --she hates being hot when she sleeps--, but she's not planning on getting back at least until midnight. She takes another sip, looks at the people walking by.

The street is busy. At a restaurant down the corner, a family is having dinner, chatting loud enough for Braeden to catch some of the ridiculous jokes they make. The bar is starting to get crowded, and the café she just left is closing its doors.

A street vendor is selling pirated movies on a stand near her and Braeden watches, amused, as a cop buys some Disney movie for his children. She takes the lid off the cup so she can tip it back and drink the last remaining drops, closes her eyes and lets the sweetness wash slowly off her tongue.

Braeden's considering trying one of the expensive cigars when her phone starts buzzing. She thinks "finally!", takes it out expecting it to be her Chicago contact. Morrell's name occupies the screen instead.

She hesitates before answering. They have never called each other before --they actually only have each other's numbers because Morrell sent a wrong text and they started talking from there. They haven't agreed that calling is off-limits or anything, but their relationship is built over some pretty peculiar boundaries. She picks up anyways.

"Braeden?" the woman on the other end of the line asks. She sounds anxious, maybe even scared, and Braeden's first reaction is worry. "Braeden, I'm sorry for calling, but..." she pauses, hesitating. Braeden gives her a second, but it doesn't sound like she knows what to say.

"Are you okay?" Braeden asks. She stands up, grabs the cup to take it with her and presses the phone closer to her ear. The woman is not answering. "Morrell, are you okay?"

"Yes, yes, I'm... fine." She pauses again, and Braeden gets a chance to think that she'd imagined her voice different. Maybe deeper. She likes this voice, though. "My brother's been missing for over two weeks," Morrell finally says, and it feels like a punch to the gut.

"Morrell..." she starts, but her friend interrupts her. "Call me Marin," Braeden can her taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. She throws the cup in a trashcan and hurries towards the hotel. "I know your full name. I know what you do. I've known for a while."

Braeden almost hangs up at that. She pulls the phone away from her face, looks at the name on screen for a moment. Of course, she knows any feeling of betrayal is hypocritical --she ran a background check on Morrell right after receiving the first few texts, suspecting that the innocent "sorry, must have a wrong number" could be a cover for something else. She'd expected to track the number back to one of her many enemies, but Marin Morrell had no connections to the criminal world. Instead, she had witty eyes, a sweet smile and a pretty average life. She didn't seem like the type who would be able to find out anything about Braeden, much less--

"Braeden? Braeden, I'm desperate. I didn't want to do this," Morrell's voice comes from the phone. "My brother is in danger. Please, Braeden."

 

* * *

 

Lydia is well into her fifth beer, and her words are slowly turning into a slur. "Work is shit, Danny," she's saying, and Danny is only able to understand her thanks to years of friendship and an almost exclusive intimacy with drunken Lydia. She doesn't really drink with anyone else, which means that Danny has the questionable privilege of being the only one who gets to hear her rambles. "Work is boring and slow and everyone is so dumb, Danny," she complains, and pushes his arm away so she can fit herself against his chest.

"Just because people aren't as smart as you it doesn't mean they're dumb," Danny says, in the same monotone he uses every time his best friend gets too pretentious. He puts his arm around her shoulders, though, and lets her snuggle against him. "Don't fall asleep on me, Martin," he warns. She passes him the beer and closes her eyes.

"I'm not," she protests. Danny watches the sun set over the sea as her complaints slowly turn into a mumble, as she closes her eyes and finally just gives up on trying to talk at all. He opens the last can of beer, careful not to wake Lydia with the movement. She's a heavy sleeper, anyway, and she only shifts a little and whispers something --"tell Gödel he can go fuck himself," which makes Danny snort and the beer almost comes up through his nose.

It's getting a little cold --as cold as it can possibly get down here, which isn't very-- and Danny can't help but think of... what would he call it? An apparition? A hallucination? For a moment, as he stepped closer to the man (Alan?), he could feel cold, sharp wind blowing on his face, he could smell pines and wet grass and blood. Nothing like the clean, salty smell of sea and sand and sunsets; not at all like the soft summer breeze.

Danny tries to push the thought away, digs through his mind for something to distract him. There are bloodstains on the lines of code that show up in his head. He thinks of the guy he hooked up with last weekend, but his skin turns darker and his eyes grow colder and suddenly he's thinking of the man that appeared in his kitchen. Even thinking of his little sister, he replays the other person's last words --except now it's Billie saying them, and twice as disturbing. He feels a little sick.

Lydia shifts against him, already restless after only napping for half an hour. She always does the same thing --drinks too fast, falls asleep, wakes up and gets super annoying again in the matter of minutes-- so Danny is not surprised. He's glad for the distraction.

"Are you alright?" she asks, squinting her eyes. Her face is red from spending all evening under the sun and she has to blink the sleep away before being able to actually focus on Danny. Still, her brow furrows with worry and she straightens up to look at him directly in the face.

Danny smiles, shakes his head. "It's getting cold," he says, and Lydia raises her eyebrows at that.

"It's hot as hell, Mahealani," she tells him, and puts a hand to his forehead. "You're not feverish, though."

"Maybe just tired," he replies, and Lydia hums. She leans on his shoulder to stand up and then extends her hand for him to grab. His left leg is numb after sitting for almost two hours, and Lydia laughs at him when he shakes it to get the feeling back.

"Come on, let's go get some dinner," she tells him, still grinning. Together, they pick up the discarded beers and Lydia runs to throw them at the Recycling bin nearby while Danny picks up his surfboard and their towels. He watches her, the way her hair is dry and matted from so much salt, falling over her sun-burnt shoulders. The palm leaves are still. The sea is calm. And yet, Danny keeps feeling the cold wind against his face, drying up his eyes, cutting at his skin.


	4. The Syntax of Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Days go by. Braeden goes to meet Marin. Someone is after Allison. The sensates start experiencing connections, visions.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this episode there is a discussion about hallucinations and disassociation. I talked it over with a friend who's experienced those things, but if you feel like I should change something or add another kind of warning, please let me know.

She'd considered a café at first, but had decided against it. Well, not so much against the café, but in favor of tequila. It's almost eight already --a perfectly respectable time to start drinking-- and Braeden's carrying two revolvers, four knives, and a couple smoke grenades, just in case. She's tense and anxious and somewhat  _excited_ , but mostly she's just really fucking annoyed at the dog barking outside. Braeden looks out of the bar's dirty windows, but she can't see the dog from here. She sighs, and flags the bartender. "Get me some lime slices with this one, yeah?"

It's the type of bar that only survives thanks to the same five old men who come in every day at noon and play chess until they have to get back home for dinner, which is Braeden's favorite kind of place. They remind her of her grandma, who used to spend her afternoons playing cards at the park with the other old ladies of the neighborhood. She learned how to cheat by watching those games; she learned how to bluff and banter and negotiate by sitting at filthy bars after her shifts and observing the behavior of the patrons, learning their body language, training herself to catch their tells.

 

"Eh, boy, get me another shot," one of the patron slurs. Scott has nicknamed him Racist Rick, because he always starts talking about how "all these Mexicans are stealing our jobs" after his second shot, and he never fails to throw a glance at Scott as he rants on about "these illegals" and how the frontier should be even  _more_ walled up and  _more_ militarized. Scott turns the TV volume up a tiny little bit, just enough for the soccer announcer to drown out the voices of the patrons. There's a dog outside that's been barking for like  _an hour_ now, but the television couldn't even cover the noise at top volume.

He wipes the dust off the tequila bottles on the top shelf and lets his mind wander through the events of the week. He's been sleeping better, and the daydreams haven't come back in almost four days. The only drawback is that Brett quickly noticed that Scott wasn't going to die and --as soon as Scott looked more like a human being-- instantly went back to leaving a mess everywhere he passed through and eating all of the food without ever remembering to do the grocery shopping. It's a little obnoxious, but it's normal, and Scott revels in every second of normalcy he can get.

 

This bar looks almost exactly like the one Braeden frequented when she was still in the force, from the dust-covered bottles of expensive whiskey on the shelves to the cigarette marks all over the old wooden tables. The only difference with the bar she frequented as a cop --aside from the bitter memories-- is that no one has pulled out a gun and threatened to shoot the barking dog yet.

The door opens with a creak, and Braeden can tell that all the patrons are looking towards it --though nobody has actually raised their heads or turned around. She doesn't move either, keeps her eyes fixed on  the mirror behind the bar, follows the woman's movements in the reflection. She's taller than she imagined --though still shorter than Braeden herself-- and even more beautiful in real life than she is in pictures. Braeden plays with the lime slice in her shot glass.

 

Three truck drivers enter the bar --Scott can always recognize them by their booming laughter, unidentifiable accents and uneven tans-- and take a table near the TV. The only woman in the group --her nametag says she's called Santana-- walks up to the bar and asks Scott for three beers and three shots of whiskey. After he's finished pouring the drinks and handing her the open beers, Scott makes a mental note to get a new whiskey bottle from the backroom. He also makes a mental note to start looking for a psychologist sometime soon, though he knows the thought will end up crumpled up and discarded along with all the previous reminders that he really needs to get back to therapy.

He's good, though --he wipes up the bar, fixes the shot glasses under the counter. He's doing just fine, even if he had a couple weird weeks, even if he keeps thinking about that woman killing herself and sometimes he dreams it's him with the gun in his hands-- he's doing just fine. Racist Rick yells "I'm gonna shoot that fucking dog!"

 

"I feared you might not show up," Marin says. She doesn't sit down just yet, instead lingering by Braeden's side, just a feet away from the next stool. Braeden knows that she's waiting for an acknowledgment. Braeden's an expert negotiator, and yet the idea of pretending to not see Marin sounds incredibly tempting right now.

"Morrell," she finally says, turning her head just so. Marin nods her head and pulls the stool away from the bar so she can sit next to Braeden, gestures at the bartender. The old man doesn't seem to see Marin at all, so Braeden leans further on the bar and raises her hand. "Hey, Carlos, get the woman a Corona and another shot for me," she calls, and the man gives her a grin that is missing too many teeth before turning towards the freezer.

 

Scott throws away the empty chocolate liquor bottle --the guy who works nights, Josh, always leaves empty bottles back in the shelves and it annoys Scott to no end-- and is about to start on the wine glasses on the top shelf when he notices someone is trying to catch his attention. He turns, still with the cleaning rag in hand, but the only ones leaning at the bar are Racist Rick and his friends.

He dismisses it as a trick of the light. He really doesn't have the time to go back to therapy but maybe he could get something to help him sleep. Most sleeping pills are safe to mix with his meds, but he's always felt like they make him slow. He doesn't want to show up at the hospital feeling all groggy.

He's reaching for the glasses again --they're ridiculously high-- when he sees the person gesturing for a drink reflected on a vodka bottle. Scott turns slowly --not another daydream, it's been a couple days since the last, please let them be gone-- and finds a woman looking right at him. He can see that she tenses up, and her eyes fleet from Scott's face to somewhere behind him.

 

Braeden's not a very spiritual person, but she's had her fair share of deals with santeras during her years working in Central America. Her philosophy has been, for years now, that "las brujas no existen pero, que la'jay, la'jay." And yet... She looks at the mirror behind the bar, back at the guy staring at her. A thought crosses her mind. "Did you see the dog when you came in?" Braeden asks. Marin looks at her, eyebrows raised, as if asking " _is this your idea of an icebreaker?_ "

"No, I didn't, why?" she asks back, deadpan. Braeden shrugs, and nods at the bartender as he puts their drinks in front of them. She looks back at the guy, searching him. As if she could find something that would give him away as a ghost or whatever. He's got a couple tattoos on his arms, a scar on his left cheekbone. He looks tired and anxious and Braeden is sure that, if she reached across the bar and tried to touch him, she could. "Nothing important," Braeden tells Marin, and turns to look at her. When she turns back to the bar, Don Carlos is mopping the floor. The dog keeps barking.

"Tell me about your brother."

 

* * *

 

Kira hates reading in English. She also hates reading in Korean, but she's been dealing with it since like, forever, so it's a little easier. Japanese is the only language she enjoys reading, but it's always easier to find most things in English --especially international news. She squints at the screen, and re-reads the sentence slowly, mouthing along the words.

"Kit, what the fuck," Kira huffs, and tries to push the cat away from the screen. Kitsune noses her palm before sitting on the keyboard, covering half of the article with her body. Kira drags a hand down her face. "Why do you always do this?" she asks, glaring at the cat. Kit meows. "I'm gonna stuff you in a box and send you back to Seoul, do you hear me?" Kira threatens. Kit blinks at her. She shifts her paws around the keyboard to sit more comfortably, and the computer makes a series of beeping sounds. Kira tries to push her again, but the cat refuses to budge. Instead, she purrs at the contact.

 

The bus passes over a hole in the street and Derek almost falls off his seat with the sudden movement. As he tries to regain his composure, he notices a child a couple rows away standing on her seat and snickering at him. His first instinct is to glare at her, but he makes an effort to contain his scowl. Instead, he holds his book with one hand and waves the other at her. The little girl grins and waves back before her mom urges her to sit back down.

Derek looks back at his book --he can't find where he left off. He frowns at the page, trying to find the archaeologist's line, but it's hard to focus on the letters. He looks up at the bus's fluorescent lights, but they all seem to be working just right. Cora always says that he's going to need glasses by the time he's thirty --she's got twenty bucks on it, though Derek never accepted that bet-- and Derek really, really hopes she's wrong. He rubs the heel of his palms against his eyes and tries to get back to his reading.

 

Color-coding always makes things easier. There are plenty of things that are simpler in Tokyo --figuring the right bus to take, comparing brands at the super market, looking for job offers in the newspaper-- but she keeps a version of her portfolio and online store in English, and her dad and most of her friends back home only speak Korean. Kira's sure that, had she gone to school in Tokyo, she probably would have had way better grades. Not  _excellent_ or anything, because she still has a little difficulty reading Japanese --and she was never a very responsible student--, but definitely better than the below average marks she always used to get. She drops the file with this stupid design in the folder marked with a red icon and opens the browser again.

Kit stays still this time, sleeping in the space behind the keyboard, only obstructing the lower part of the screen. Kira takes a  _deep_  breath, and starts over from the top of the paragraph. It's slow and hard wok, but she really wants to be more informed about the floods in Florida --Harley texts her every day to tell her that they're fine, but her Internet's been down for a couple days now and Kira worries. She's thinking of just giving up and turning on the text-to-speech app when her phone starts buzzing. Kira is glad for the distraction.

 

It's the third time he's read this line and he still hasn't understood a single word. It's probably the constant movement of the bus, or maybe the lack of sleep --having a long-lost relative sleeping on his couch and an apparently-not-dead relative after his and his sister's money doesn't do much for getting proper rest. He blinks a couple times before starting again.

"La doct..." he squints at the page, "La doctora lo est..."

The bus stops at a red light and Derek frowns at the words. Even with the bus still, he still can't focus properly on the letters. He closes the book and lets out an annoyed huff. Just as the bus starts moving again, he looks out of the window and sees a woman --dark hair, brow furrowed in what looks like concern, mouth pressed in a tight line-- talking on her phone in the middle of the street. A car runs past her, but she doesn't seem to notice it.

 

"What do you mean a break in? Why didn't you call me sooner?" Kira asks, standing from her desk chair. Kit raises her head, curious. Kira frowns as she listens to her mother talking in a jumbled mix of Japanese and Korean, explaining that they'd only noticed the break in when they woke up --it's Saturday, they must have gotten out of bed late-- and both agreed it was sound to contact the police first. "Your father is talking to an officer at this very moment, we're just reporting what got stolen," her mom adds. Kira mutters something --nonsense, she doesn't even register the words as they leave her lips. She understands that neither of them was hurt, but she can't shake off the dread that clutches at her stomach.

"It wasn't even that much. They took our computers, my phone, one of the decorative statuettes Ken keeps in the living room. They trashed my studio a bit, but nothing is severely damaged. The insurance will cover it, and nobody got hurt."

Kira hums along as Mom speaks --she feels dumb for needing reassurance when they're the ones going through such a stressful situation. Kit jumps off the desk and runs up to her, paws at her ankles while Kira shifts her weight from one foot to the other. 

"I'm glad you're okay. I love you," she says. 

She can almost see her mom's little smile. 

"I love you too, we both do. You don't need to worry about us, we just wanted to let you know," Mom insists, using her most serious and calm voice. 

Kira makes a little noise that she hopes her mother will be able to interpret as 'I know, but I worry anyways'.

 

* * *

 

Tracy's favorite street is the one she takes right after the bridge. It's thin like a sidewalk, just wide enough for a car to go through, but there are rarely any cars passing. Tracy climbs it with effort --two weeks of taking buses really did take a toll on her--, lifting her body off the seat so she can put all of her weight on the pedals, clutching the handlebar and trying to keep her breathing even.

By the time she reaches the highest point of the street, her thighs are starting to ache, but the good part begins here. She loosens her grip on the handlebar and lets the wind blow on her face. The hill is not that steep, really, but it's almost ten blocks long and she soon picks up speed. Tracy can hear an engine behind her, and she quickly deviates to the side so the vehicle can pass her by.

A black Kawasaki rushes past her, engine roaring, lights off. The person driving isn't wearing a helmet, and their short black hair flies behind them. It's not warm enough for tank tops, Tracy thinks. The person turns to look over their shoulder, and Tracy notices that they've taken one hand off the wheel and they're reaching inside their jacket for something. They take a sharp turn --their calf just an inch from the floor, like in the races on TV-- and disappear into a small alley.

Tracy looks over her shoulder too, but there's no one coming. She gets back to the middle of the street, and tugs at the brake levers when she's close to the alley, trying to get a look at the person on the bike.

 

Allison hits the brakes and jumps off the bike. She pushes it behind the waste containers, and steps back to hide in the shadows herself. She crouches in place, gun held loosely in one hand while she digs in her pockets with the other. She takes out the flash-drive and looks around, trying to figure out a place where she will be able to find it later.

"Are you okay?" a soft voice asks. Allison turns and points the gun without even thinking, but the person standing in front of her isn't any of her aunt's henchmen. Instead, a thin girl who doesn't look any older than her is holding onto the handlebar of a bright pink bicycle, and looking really scared. 

"Oh, God," she's muttering, eyes wide with fear, and the first thought through Allison's head is that her English is rusty as hell.

A car stops at the entrance of the alley. Allison can hear the doors slamming closed, combat boots stomping on the pavement. She looks at the girl, trying to remember the English word for "cachez-vous". The girl is turning towards the noise, looking even more scared now. Allison can't really see anything from behind the container, but she hears steps getting closer, the click of someone releasing the safety of their gun.

"There is no one here," one of the men calls. Allison is wondering if they're absolutely stupid --she'd be lucky, yeah, but she wouldn't take her aunt as the kind to hire useless people. The girl is standing right in the middle of the alley, the metal of her bike reflecting the lights from the car. There is no way they aren't seeing her.

 

"Es-tu sûr?" the man asks. He's standing two feet away from Tracy, close enough that --if she dared to move-- she could take the gun from his hand. He looks straight past her, squinting in the dimly lit alley. Someone on a balcony yells in French. It doesn't sound Quebecois at all. The alley definitely doesn't look like the one behind the Chinese restaurant, either. She glances at the woman crouching behind the waste container, at the gun in her hand, at the military-looking clothes of the two men talking in French. Her heart is racing.

They step a little closer --the one nearest to her will bump into her if he takes another step--, and Tracy can see that the woman is raising her own gun, getting ready to jump on them. A motorbike engine rumbles in the street, rushing past the parked car. The men look at each other, and someone back in the car yells something. They hurry back out of the alley, and Tracy stares after them as they jump into the car.

She exhales through her mouth --slow and steady, until her lungs ache a little from the effort. She waits a second before inhaling, this time through her nose, and closes her eyes. The sound of the engine fades away in the distance --she counts her breaths, slow and steady, slow and steady. She hears a rustle of clothes against clothes, careful steps towards her.

"Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?" a soft voice asks, and the touch on her shoulder doesn't feel like a figment of her imagination.

 

* * *

 

"What do you think?" Lydia asks, smoothing the crinkles on the front of her shirt. Danny throws a glance at her, and hums. "Is that a yes?" she asks, sounding slightly annoyed. Danny doesn't take his eyes from the screen this time. "Yeah, you look good."

He tries to reach for the coffee mug without looking and almost knocks it off the desk. Lydia snorts and her heels click as she walks around the room. Danny is about to turn around and tell her to fuck off when a new window pops up on the screen.  "God, finally," he exclaims, and this time he does look at what he's doing when he goes to grab the mug. The coffee is cold already, and Lydia laughs at his disgusted groan.

"Did you win the stupid bet?" she asks, walking up to sit on the arm of Danny's desk chair. Danny gives her a crooked grin, and looks back at the screen. He has to send proof that he actually broke through the security system, and probably wait a couple days until the mods verify it, but-- 

"Did you really, really, really spend the last six hours screaming at your computer for fifty bucks?" Lydia insists, and Danny shrugs. "Wait, wait, is this the DCO database?"

 

Isaac elbows his way through the crowd carrying two beers in one hand and a bottle of tonic water in the other. Boyd and Erica follow his movements with amusement --he's easy to spot, a mess of unruly curls always peeking above everyone else. "I'm not getting up for the next round," he yells when he's close enough to their booth to be heard over the music.

"Quit being such a baby," Erica yells back. 

Boyd chuckles, and accepts the beer that Isaac hands him. Erica uses her teeth to open the tonic water, and grins when she catches Boyd and Isaac looking at her over their drinks. "What?"

"You're going to ruin your teeth," Boyd tells her. "I'm a little afraid to let you anywhere near my dick," Isaac says at about the same time. Boyd's loud laughter makes a couple people turn their heads. Erica smiles too --but it's more of a grin, really, and she leans closer to Isaac with a predatory look. Boyd catches the red of her nails running up Isaac's thigh, can guess by Isaac's look that whatever she's saying into his ear is a good combination of threat and promise. "We're going to get kicked out  _again_ ," he warns, and Erica turns to pout at him.

 

Lydia is leaning her weight on Danny's shoulder, her elbow digging a little painfully on the contracted muscle at the base of his neck. "I can't believe..." she mutters, but she doesn't seem to care about finishing the thought. Danny's resigned himself to idly scrolling down his Twitter feed on his phone, throwing Lydia the occasional glance in hopes that she'll eventually get the hint and let him get back to work --well, to proving his superior hacking abilities to a bunch of nerds in the Internet, which kind of counts as work.

Lydia's eyes scan the screen quickly. When she gets to the bottom, she pushes Danny's hand away so she can grab the mouse and scroll down. "Holy shit," she says after a few seconds. Danny assumes it's just her voicing her thoughts out loud, until she smacks him over the head. "Danny, the neurological research these people are doing is..." Lydia scrolls further down the page, eyes jumping from one line to the other and then back, her mouth slightly agape. "This shouldn't even be possible."

Danny looks at the open file, at the names of chemicals he barely remembers from high school and the completely unintelligible diagrams.  He then cranes his neck to look at Lydia, waiting for her to realize he's got no fucking idea of what any of the things in this file are.

 

"Come over here," he tells them, tugging at Isaac's wrist. Isaac in turn grabs a fistful of Erica's jacket and pulls her along, and Erica follows them stumbling and giggling. Boyd makes way through the people easily --the crowd is less thick on this side of the club, away from the main dance floor-- and Isaac and Erica follow him. Isaac tangles his fingers with Boyd's; Erica clasps Isaac's hand. 

They make it past the empty stage and through the door that leads backstage, and Erica rushes so she can walk by Boyd, both of them dragging Isaac behind them through the tiny corridor. The music is muffled back here, but the thin walls vibrate along with the bass. Erica bumps into Boyd's side, looks up at him with a crooked grin.

"We're going to get kicked out  _again_ ," she mocks. Boyd laughs, and lets go of Isaac's hand so he can grab Erica by the waist and pull her closer. "I'm being smart here, unlike you two before," he tells her, crouching a little so he can talk closer to her ear. Isaac laughs --Boyd can tell he's biting back a smartass comment-- and grabs the back of Boyd's beanie to tug him closer to him.

"Lydia, that would be like,  _really_ illegal," someone says, right when Boyd is about to kiss Isaac. He pulls away a little, squinting in the barely lit corridor. "For fuck's sake, Daniel, this is illegal enough already. Come on." He can barely make the two silhouettes near the door that leads back to the dancefloor, but he can hear them clearly. The American accents feel starkly out of place.

"What's wrong?" Erica asks, sounding concerned. Boyd shushes her and points at the two people talking a few meters away from them. 

 

"This would make you a direct accomplice in the theft of confidential research," Danny insists, though he's already downloading the whole directory. Lydia rolls her eyes at him, as if he was saying something stupid. "Lydia, you are aware that you could go to jail for something like this, right? You're going to have stolen private information on your computer." He saves the files to a folder in his portable hard-drive, and starts to erase his traces from the DCO server. Lydia hums, tapping her nails against the back of Danny's chair. 

Danny feels a little more paranoid than usual, though he isn't sure of why. The pride and amusement he got after cracking through DCO's security system is gone, and he just feels uneasy now. Like he's being watched. "Lydia," he starts again, as he closes the browser and all of his programs.

"I know, Danny, I know," Lydia finally says, and it sounds like she's actually trying to keep the bitchiness out of her tone --though she's not being all that successful. She sighs, and pushes against Danny's shoulder so she can stand up. "But this research might be the most interesting thing I've seen in three years, and I really, really want to get a chance to read it," she says. There's a glimmer in her eyes, very much unlike the bored expression she gets when she talks about her current work.

"God, just promise me you're not going to mention this to anyone," Danny mutters, and he opens his desk's drawer to look for a flash-drive. Lydia holds her hand to her chest, only half-serious, and Danny can't help but smile at her. 

 

Isaac squints, looking in the direction Boyd is signaling. Erica is frowning, looking at Boyd instead. "Who do you mean?" she asks, and Boyd turns his head back to her. She looks really confused, and just a little worried. "It's not dark enough that you can't see them, come on," Boyd tells her. He's the one who needs glasses, not them. The two people are still talking --the taller of the two hands something to the other and says "if you lose it, I'll kill you, okay?"

They're close enough that Boyd can make out some details. The taller one, probably a bloke, has broad shoulders, light brown skin and a tattoo shows on his bare leg --he's barefoot and wearing swimming shorts, which strikes Boyd as odd. The woman next to them --white, short even in high heels, long red hair-- is wearing a flowery dress and holding a mug in one of her hands. 

"Can't you hear them?" Boyd asks, and Isaac shakes his head. Boyd looks at him for a second, but his attention is drawn away when the taller of the two strangers shifts suddenly. Even in the dim emergency lights, Boyd can tell that the man is looking right at him. 

"What are you doing here?" he asks, stepping forward. The redhead turns around too, and grabs his arm with her free hand. "Who are you talking to?" She asks --softly, Boyd thinks that he shouldn't be able to hear it above the music.

"There is no one else here," Isaac says, putting a hand on his shoulder. "I'm talking to them," the man at the end of the corridor replies, pointing towards where Boyd, Erica and Isaac are standing. "There is no one there," the other says. Neither Erica nor Isaac seem to hear them, instead exchanging worried glances over Boyd's shoulder. Boyd feels like the beer is trying to push back up out of his stomach. 

 

Lydia tugs at his arm, digging her nails in Danny's skin. "Is this supposed to be a joke? Because it's not funny," she says, and presses her lips in a tight line, obviously waiting for Danny's answer. Danny gestures at the strangers standing in the doorway to the kitchen, opens his mouth to reply to her --and then a thought comes to his mind. He'd ended up dismissing what happened a few weeks ago --he was standing almost in the same place when he saw the woman at the door that night-- as a result of sleep deprivation and too much caffeine, but he feels as lucid as can be right now. 

These three people don't look ethereal and dream-like, like the woman from the other night. They look more real, more tangible. There's a blonde white girl with her lipstick smudged and wearing more leather than is reasonable with this kind of heat; a tall black guy in a grey beanie and a jean vest who's looking down at her with a pretty disoriented expression; and a thin, lanky white guy with his back to Danny.

"There are three people standing right there," Danny says, tries to keep his tone calm. "There are thee people standing in the doorway, and I can see them," the taller man lifts his head, and looks straight at Danny, "and I'm sure one of them is seeing me too." The man nods, and mutters something that Danny guesses, by the movement of his lips, might be "I am".

"Do you mean, like a hallucination?" Lydia asks, her frown growing deeper. Danny doesn't look at her. He holds the other man's gaze and says --he knows he doesn't sound calm-- "Yeah, like a hallucination."


	5. Birth In Reverse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott decides to walk home from work. Braeden and Marin meet again. Tracy has a vivid dream. Kira's mom tells her of a break-in at her place. Boyd and Danny talk to their friends, search for explanations.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter has a brief mention of child abduction, as well as discussions of dissociation and hallucinations.

Scott steps out of the bar and looks up at the sky. The moon is a yellow-ish blur behind the clouds, and the air is humid and warm. A storm is coming --he's been feeling it for days, like a pressure on his lungs-- and it's only getting hotter and heavier as time goes by. Scott starts making his way out of the alley, hoping the bus won't take too long to come.

He's almost at the bus stop when he remembers that he's not carrying a single cent. He gave the last of his change to the homeless old lady outside the hospital, and then completely forgot about his intention to ask Josh to lend him some money. For a moment, Scott considers walking the two blocks back to The Basement, but ends up deciding against it. The walk home isn't that long, anyways.

The neighborhood isn't familiar to Scott --he walks from the hospital to the bar sometimes, because it's a little closer, but his house is the other way and he doesn't know this side of the city that well. It's a decaying area, the kind where the parks only have dead trees and broken swing-sets; where long-closed business still have washed-out signs hanging out front, the paint chipped away. Scott wishes he had his earphones, but Brett stepped on them a couple weeks ago and, though he promised that he'll buy Scott a new pair soon, has completely forgotten about it. Scott tries to think of a song that he could hum to himself, but he comes up blank.

The feeling that he's being followed starts about ten blocks from the bar. His backpack is heavy with his books, hospital scrubs, and shoes; he thinks that it'd be hard to run carrying it. He slows down and tries to look behind him without being too obvious, turns his head to the side and pretends to read some graffiti while he sneaks a glance at the street. There's no one, though, not even a stray dog or a wandering cat.

 

Danny opens one of the desk drawers so he can place the beer can there. There isn't a single inch of free space around his computer, and he really doesn't feel like cleaning the mess of wires, CDs, paper sheets and empty mugs he's been accumulating these past few days. At least part of it is Lydia's fault --she spends way too much time at his place because she doesn't like her roommate-- but he has to admit that most of the cluster is his own doing.

"I'm almost worried for your well-being, Mahealani," a voice calls from his speakers. His best friend -- _second_ best friend, Lydia would correct-- is making a disapproving face in the videochat window. Danny rolls his eyes.

"I've just had... a harder time focusing than usual, to be honest. I guess the mess comes with it." He shrugs, and Jacks looks like she wants to backtrack on her previous statement, tell him she really is worried. Instead, she clenches her jaw, brushes a strand of hair out of her face and swiftly changes the subject to Danny's most recent job with Google and her own (mis)adventures at the law firm she's working at.

Compared to Lydia's manic study of the files they (he) stole from DCO and his own unfocused, hyperactive paranoia of the last week, talking to Jacks is a relief. She's laughing as she mocks her coworkers' terrible fashion style; Danny's almost done with his beer. It feels normal in a way that nothing else has lately.

 

"Oh, my god, shut the fuck up," Erica says, muffling a long suffering groan against her palms. Their upstairs neighbors do  _not_ shut up. In fact, they seem to only get louder, one of them singing at the top of their lungs. Boyd looks up at the ceiling, at the big-ass humidity stain that keeps getting bigger and more expensive to fix every day. Someone in the apartment above theirs drops something --sounds heavy-- and loud laughter echoes down. "I'm gonna murder them," Erica almost growls.

The coffee maker beeps, and Erica stops complaining about their neighbors so she can complain about how " _ridiculously far_ "  the coffee is, instead. Boyd points out that the stool she's sitting at is less than a meter away from the counter, but it only makes her glare at him.

They drink their coffee in silence, their stools pushed close enough that they keep bumping shoulders, brushing arms and thighs with the slightest shift. Their neighbors don't really lower their voices, but Boyd kind of stops hearing them after a minute. Erica leans the side of her head against his shoulder, muttering, "I'm not taking another morning shift ever again."

He knows that's a lie --Paige has a sister to take care of and Trayvon has two baby daughters so, when they ask Erica to swap shifts, she can never say no. Boyd has early classes three days out of the week, so he's grown accustomed to waking up early.

He keeps the mug near his mouth after taking a sip, enjoying the smell of too-bitter, too-black coffee and the warmth from the ceramic against his palm. Erica finishes her coffee, and stands up to drop the mug in the sink. Boyd listens to the shuffle of her clothes and the soft sounds of her bare feet on the floor as she moves around the kitchen. "Vernon," Erica says after a minute --their neighbors have probably left for work already, the apartment is almost completely silent. "Are you okay?" she asks, and her voice is softer than ever, the kind of soft she saves just for him.

"Of course," Boyd tells her, though they both know it's a lie. Erica steps around the stool to stand next to him, giving him a scrutinizing look. He looks down at his mug, sips his coffee and tries to avoid her eyes. It doesn't really work. "Saturday wasn't the first time it happened," he finally says, already dreading all the possible outcomes of this conversation. Erica nods to indicate she's listening, but doesn't comment anything just yet. Boyd's grateful for it.

"When Alicia disappeared..." he looks at her, at the knot of worry at her brow and the smudged makeup under her eyes. He can't remember the last time he trusted anyone with this (the psychologist they sent him to back then, maybe?) but he can't remember the last time he trusted anyone as much as he trusts Erica and Isaac. "She wasn't the only one. Six girls disappeared in the span of two years. I think I've told you this." Erica nods again, and steps between Boyd's stool and the kitchen's bar so she can look right at him, resting her hands on his knees as a small gesture of support. Boyd just tightens his fingers around the mug.

"When I was about twelve, there was this girl..."

 

He stops at his room's door for a moment, holding his tea in one hand and his book in the other. He glances over at Malia, who's sleeping on the couch. She's got a vague resemblance to Peter --something in her eyebrows, in the sharpness of her eyes-- but it vanishes when her face is relaxed. Maybe there is something of Cora in her, though. Derek suspects that he's the only one who could see it. It's a roughness at her edges, a state of constant defensiveness that keeps her strung tight like a cord.

"¿'Tás bien?" Cora whispers, standing by his side --the door to her bedroom is right next to his. She leans her shoulder against the door frame and crosses her arms over her chest, and Derek gives her a shrug as his only reply. "What do you think will happen?" she asks, careful to keep her voice as low as possible.

"We weren't exactly hiding during these years," Derek says, and his answer is more than clear: if Malia could find them, Peter definitely will. Derek wants to add "and a man I saw in a dream told me there is someone coming after me." He doesn't. Instead, he turns to look properly at her and whispers, "But we're not gonna uproot our entire lives again, Cora. I promise."

She's been looking angry and worried for days, with her shoulders always tense and her brow always furrowed. Derek wishes he was a better person, a better brother. Wishes he knew what to do, how to take care of Cora and help Malia, how to get themselves out of this situation.

"I'm going out, yeah?" Cora says, and punches Derek's shoulder lightly before walking back into her room. She comes out a second later with a jacket and turns off the living room's lamp before stepping out of the apartment.

 

She's been waiting in the street for a couple minutes now, way more than she'd like in this part of Texas. Braeden's got beef with some of the drug smuggling rings around here, and even more beef with the local police. She looks at the scene around her --the lone streetlight at the corner, the beat-down cars, the graffiti decorating every closed shop's curtains. A guy in a red hoodie turns around the corner.

Braeden tenses up, follows his movements with an attentive eye. He's on the other sidewalk, and the street is too dark to really see his face. He's walking fast, hands deep inside his pockets and head down, but he doesn't look all that suspicious. Braeden watches him until he's crossing the next street.

Steps come from her left, and Braeden turns to find Marin slowly walking out of the alley that separates the building she'd directed Braeden to from the old two-story house next to it. She looks way less put-together than she did a couple days ago at the bar, worry and exhaustion evident in her slouching shoulders and the dark bags under her eyes. "Braeden," Morrell says, keeping her voice low. She gestures for Braeden to come with her, and to bring the bike along.

Braeden's ride is a big and expensive chopper, the kind that her less than friendly acquaintances would recognize easily, and she's glad that Morrell thought of keeping it out of sight. They leave it at the end of the alley, hidden by the shadows, and Braeden hooks the helmet around her elbow before following Marin into the building through a small service door.

 

Scott's starting to walk faster again when, for no real reason, he looks at the writing on the wall. It takes him a second of confused staring to realize that he can't read it. Scott runs his eyes across the letters --he recognizes the word 'them', picks up 'connection' easily, but the rest doesn't make sense to him.

"Pick up the phone, come on," someone nearby says. He turns around quickly --his backpack lifts off his back with the sudden movement and hits his backbone with particular force. There's a woman a few feet away --pale, with long wavy black hair held in a tight ponytail; nose buried into her scarf as she listens to the waiting tone. Her fingers are tight around the phone, and her frown grows deeper as the seconds go by. Scott feels that he should step away, leave before she notices he's listening; but her entire body language suggests anxiety, and he's never been good at ignoring people's distress.

There is a change in her posture that makes Scott think the person she's calling might have finally picked up. "Violet?" she asks, and Scott can hear the distant sound of someone talking to her on the other end of the line.

The woman sighs, long, loud and deeply relieved, her whole body visibly relaxing. "Are you okay?" she asks, and whatever the other person says must be hilarious, because she lets out a high-pitched, almost hysterical laugh. Her voice sounds a little strained, a little teary when she calms down and whispers "God, I thought you were dead."

The sound of an engine distracts Scott. He turns to see a bus --the one he should have taken home-- rushing past him, almost completely empty. A man sitting by the very last window looks straight at Scott for a second, but the click of heels catches his attention again. He looks at the woman, and sees that she's walking away, still talking on the phone. She's now speaking in what sounds like French. Scott watches her until she turns the corner.

The sensation that something's off doesn't quite fade away, but he makes his best effort to ignore it. A chopper bike roars past him, the lights making Scott squint. He stuffs his hands into the hoodie's pocket and starts walking faster. He passes a few people, but the night is too cold for anyone to waste their time outside at this hour.

 

"So, how did the interview go?" her mom asks. She wants to tell her that it was terrible. Really, really terrible. I-wanna-bury-myself-alive terrible. Kira can imagine the severe line of her lips, the inevitable suggestion that Kira might have not been ready to move to another country. "Pretty good, actually. I think they liked me." If only she could have kept her voice this even at the interview an hour ago. "How are you guys doing?"

It's not fair, Kira thinks. It's not fair that she gets anxious and flighty and starts stuttering and word-vomiting and hyperventilating when she's applying for a job she might actually like. She wishes she could get a warning at least. She's tired of never knowing when her entire body and mind will decide to turn against her and fuck everything up.

She's only listening to her mom peripherally, more focused being angry and frustrated and herself, but something Mom says finally pulls her away from her thoughts. She presses the phone closer to her ear, "What'd you just say about another break-in?"

Her mother makes a disapproving clicking sound with her tongue (the type that says "Listens to me when I speak," or maybe "I can tell when you lie to me.") and sighs, explains the situation again in her calmest tone of voice. Not at home, she says, and it wasn't successful anyways. Someone tried to break into the laboratories where Noshiko works, but they triggered the alarms and had to leave before being able to take anything. "What could they want to take?"

"Well, they were trying to break into..." there is a second of hesitation on the other end, "... into the right wing of the building..." Kira frowns as she hears her mom's voice weakening. There is a short, heavy silence, and then Mom switches her speech to a quick Japanese, sounding way less composed than Kira is used to. "The genetic research division --my division-- is in the right wing." Kira is vaguely aware that she's biting at her nails. "When they broke in here, they didn't take the hard-drive where I keep my work because I always hide it in my closet, but they took all other electronics. They were probably aiming for it."

Kira knows that her mom's work is something possibly revolutionary, something that has drawn a hundred different pharmaceutical corporations to knock on her door begging her to go work for them. Noshiko hasn't been able to tell her much about it, except that it's got to do with neurological transmitters or something like that. The idea that someone might be willing to break into her parents' house and into a heavily guarded laboratory for that research terrifies Kira.

"I need to make a copy of my files and get it to Satomi safely," her mom says, talking to herself as much as she's talking to Kira. Satomi Ito, her mom's oldest colleague, lives in Tokyo. The problem is to get all of the files with her mother's work from Seoul in a way they can't be hacked or physically stolen, Kira knows. "I love you, talk to you later," mom adds, almost as an afterthought, and hangs up before Kira can say anything else.

 

"I'm staying at a friend's," Marin says, guiding Braeden up the stairs. The building is old, with the walls' paint chipped and cobwebs hanging at every corner. The stairwell is barely lit, and Braeden keeps her right hand hovering next to the revolver at her hip. She looks at Morrell's clothes --she's wearing flats, jeans and a black sweater; and Braeden knows her just well enough to know that she must feel uncomfortable dressed like this. Braeden doesn't allow herself to linger on the thought, to evaluate how much of their "friendship" is real. Morrell stops at the door that opens to the third floor, and turns to look at Braeden. 

"Her name is Tara," she adds. "Tara Graeme, she's with the local police." Braeden frowns at her. The name doesn't ring a bell, but Braeden's got an ill reputation down South and she's sure that her name will definitely raise alarms to the cop's ears.

"Don't worry, she's a childhood friend. She won't say anything." Braeden doesn't really relax at that --she grazes the thigh holster with her fingers as she climbs the last few steps to stand next to Marin. She doesn't move her hand away from her gun as they walk down the corridor to apartment "C".

Morrell knocks on the door, a rhythmic pattern that Braeden will make sure to remember. She listens for the footsteps on the other side, hears the characteristic sound of police-issued boots. Then, a chain falling out of its holder, a key turning in the lock. The door opens slowly, and a woman in her late twenties --light brown skin, curly hair held in a tight knot, thin eyebrows knotted in a deep frown-- looks her up and down before stepping aside and allowing them to enter the place.

Morrell ignores the tension in the room and introduces them to each other with a calm, collected tone, and immediately makes way for the kitchen. "You take your coffee sweet, right?" she asks Braeden over her shoulder. She nods, and finally lets her hand drop away from her revolver.

  

The house is big and white and modern, all sleek lines and sterile surfaces. It feels like a memory --Tracy's never been to this house before-- and she knows the way with the kind of security that can only come from living in a place for years. She takes a corner, walks up a flight of stairs, pushes open a door and never needs to think about where she's going.

She stops outside a door --there are people yelling on the other side, a man and a woman arguing. She feels like she  _should_ understand the words, but Tracy was never any good at French. She kept doodling in the margin of her notebooks during her language classes, barely managed to pass her tests back in high school.

There is a loud noise --something heavy falling to the floor-- and the click of a gun's safety being unlocked. She steps back, looks around for somewhere to hide. The voices are more hushed now --the woman sounds threatening, angry.

"Trace, love," Caitlin mutters, breath warm against her cheek. She clings to the dream (she wants to know what's going to happen, she wants to understand the words being said), steps close to the door again, puts her eye to the keyhole and tries to make out the scene on the other side. She sees the gun, the woman's angry eyes, her mouth like-- "Tracy?"

She opens her eyes to see Cait's worried frown, her messy hair like a halo around her head. The bedside lamp is on, and Tracy finds she's glad not to wake up in complete darkness.

 

"The last time he was seen..." Marin stops talking for a second, pursing her lips. Braeden can see the way she straightens her shoulders, the crease between her brows, all the little gestures that let her pain and worry show even through her calm exterior. She still doubted Marin's intentions after their meeting at the bar, but she can't bring herself to distrust her anymore. "He was spotted with this woman. We don't have a name, prints, anything."

Braeden nods, takes the picture that Marin hands her with her left hand while she moves her right hand to grab the coffee mug resting on the table. She looks at the picture, and freezes with her hand hovering over the mug. Graeme looks at her with raised eyebrows.

"Kali. Her name..." Braeden stops, realizes she's still got her hand stuck mid-motion, grabs the coffee. "I don't know if that's her name. But people call her Kali. She's a contract killer." Braeden doesn't add ' _like me_ ', because Marin already knows that, and she's sure that Tara knows too. There is no need to give the cop a direct confession. "She's been off the grid for about a year, though. Nobody knows why."

She sips her coffee but keeps looking at the picture over the mug's brim. Kali looks just like she remembers her --they crossed paths a couple times, though they never actually worked together-- stunning and dangerous. The photograph is a grainy traffic camera picture dated two weeks ago, taken in a small city in North California, but clear enough that Braeden can see Kali's angry frown. She looks like she's arguing with the man standing next to her --Marin's brother.

"Why would your brother know a person like Kali?" Tara asks Marin, looking at her with genuine curiosity. Braeden is glad that she doesn't have to be the one to ask, because Marin looks deeply conflicted about all of this. She throws a glance that Braeden can't quite read, exhales slowly. Why would a pharmaceutical researcher know a person like Braeden, anyway? 

 

Vernon wakes up with a start, sits up in the bed before he's even fully conscious again. The room is almost completely dark, one thin strip of moonlight slipping under the bottom of the curtain.

He was dreaming of Alicia again --he doesn't remember the dream, but he feels bile in his throat and fear down his spine and the kind of desperation that he only gets when he has nightmares about his sister. He wants to turn on the night lamp, but he's afraid Mom will see the light filtering under the door and yell at him. He doesn't know what time it is. He gets out of bed slowly, careful not to shift too much so that the old wooden structure won't creak.

The floor is cold against the soles of his feet --but he feels cold all over, he feels as if there was cold wind cutting his face. Vernon steps towards the window, slow and calculated so that he won't make any noise, and reaches to pull the heavy curtain open. He stops, though. His fingers clutch the fabric but hold it in place, and he's not sure of why he decided to look outside in the first place.

"Vernon," a weak, high-pitched voice calls. He thinks of Alicia, doesn't even stop to question it before he pulls the curtain open.

It's foggy and dark, the parking lot that separates this building from the next one completely empty. He feels like something is squeezing his stomach, feels tears burning behind the bridge of his nose, and shuts his eyes to try and stop them from falling.

"Vernon," the voice repeats. He doesn't want to open his eyes. "Vernon, please, he's coming," the voice --it sounds like a girl but it doesn't sound like Alicia, her voice is thinner and higher and there is a slight lisp to her words. He doesn't want to open his eyes, but he does anyways.

He recognizes the girl instantly. She's gripping his window's bars with fingers that have turned almost purple because of the cold, and she's paler than she used to be when Vernon saw her playing in the swing-sets right out of the block, but she looks unmistakably like the picture in the 'Missing' posters that her parents hung all over the neighborhood.

"Aisha?" he asks, voice trembling. Aisha nods, and looks over her shoulder before turning back to him. "He's going to kill me," she says, and there are tears in her eyes, white snow clinging to her dark black hair.

 

"I should go to sleep, I gotta be in court at nine," Jacks says, and Danny raises his beer in her direction. It's like the third one already. "Get some sleep, Dan. I mean it." Her brow is furrowed in worry, and Danny kind of feels guilty about it.

He knows that Jacks puts great work into her stone-cold bitch facade --just as much as Danny does in his chill, kicked-back attitude. But he's been way off his game lately, he knows that Jacks and Lydia have a right to be concerned. Lydia hasn't said anything yet, but he doesn't put it past her to text Jacks and demand that she be the one to approach Danny instead.

"Aw, Imma start thinking you care, Whittemore," he says, flashing a grin at his friend on the screen. She huffs and flips him off before disconnecting the videochat.

Danny nudges the beer pensively, looking at the screen without really seeing it. Lydia knows that something's up with him, Jackie either knows or at least suspects it. And, well, he knows that he's in some shit. He's known for a while but, since he didn't see a way out of it, he'd decided to carefully ignore it and hope that it would eventually go away. It doesn't look like that plan is going to fly any longer.

He'd blamed the first apparition on exhaustion, but that explanation went out the window as soon as three people appeared in his living room when he was completely lucid. Lydia's possible answers were half-hearted and unconvincing, from food-poisoning to accidentally ingesting a psychotropic. Isolated hallucinations with no other symptoms don't fit the description of any mental illness he's researched in the fast few days.

Mulder1347, from the supernatural forum, suggested that he might have been abducted and his visions might be attempts at communication from extraterrestrials; Danny remembers as he’s tipping the can to get the last of the beer. The thought makes him snort so loudly that a bit of liquid almost comes up his nose.

Deep in thought, he doesn't realize that his screen has changed for a good thirty seconds, until a pop-up in Japanese starts flashing neon characters at him. He goes to put the beer down, only to realize that the open drawer he'd been using as a cup holder is no longer there. Actually, his desk is no longer there.

A tiny black desk with an all-in-one computer and a sleeping cat on it is now in front of him. Behind it, a big window opens to a jungle of skyscrapers, the sun --high in the sky-- reflecting on every surface. A billboard in Japanese announces what seems to be a brand of fast food.

When he makes the desk chair turn around, it doesn't make its usual squeaking noise. Where his bed should be, a tiny kitchen table and two chairs stand. There's a counter and a fridge to his left, a bed partially covered by a curtain to his right. Piles of boxes in a corner make him think the person living here might have just moved in. The question is, where the fuck is  _here_?

The only door in the small apartment opens with a soft click, and Danny turns to his right so fast that, if the can still had any beer, it'd have probably splashed all over the floor.

 

From the balcony Derek can hear the neighbors talking --the Korean family downstairs is laughing at the TV, his neighbor is scolding his cat, some kids in the street walk by with tambores and bombos. Derek hopes they won't be playing their drums anywhere near here.

He shifts so the light from the window will shine over his book, but he can't focus on reading. Two women are speaking somewhere near. Despite having Cora (and now Malia) around, he still registers people speaking English as strange. He closes the book, stands up from his chair and moves closer to the balcony's wall. He's not sure where the voices are coming from.

"Really, it's nothing. Carolina told me it's probably stress, and she's gonna make me try a new medication soon." The woman sounds tired --Derek can almost feel the anxiety in her voice.

"You don't need to put on a brave face for me. You know that, right?" The other girl is trying to be soothing, but she sounds worried. Derek leans over the wall, but the balconies underneath his seem to be empty. The only lit window is the Chwa family's.

There is a moment of silence --it hangs heavy over the alley that separates Derek's building from the next one. Then, the first girl lets out a breath, a sigh so long and deep that he can hear it as clearly as if she was standing next to him. "Carolina doesn't really know what's up with me. She says this doesn't sound like the episodes I used to have, or anything that'd make sense with my diagnosis. I..." She stops, gives Derek half a second to feel guilty about eavesdropping on a conversation so obviously painful to her. He can't stop listening.

"I worked really hard to be able to tell when I'm disassociating, and this doesn't feel like it. Like..." she hesitates, Derek imagines that out of a loss for words. "Y'know, I get that out-of-body feeling sometimes, but it's more like I'm at two places at once. I get confusing emotions, things that I know I'm not feeling come at me. And the hallucinations..."

 

The coffee tastes oddly sweet in his next sip, and Boyd cringes a little. He puts the mug back down, and looks back at Erica, who's moved to sit next to him again. She looks askance, as if trying to figure out the right way to express concern or show support without overstepping. Softness doesn't come easy to her, Boyd knows.

"Vernon, I'm..." she hesitates, taps her nails against the table. He shifts so he can put a hand over hers, shrugs.

"It was a long time ago. She... Eventually, I stopped seeing her." That's a half-truth, but he doesn't feel ready to tell her the rest of it. It's grim and painful and hard to believe, something he wishes he could bury deep in his memory and never think of again. "The psychiatrist my parents sent me to said it was a symptom of PTSD, that it would go away eventually."

"But this..." Erica bites her lower lip, takes a breath before speaking again. "These people you saw... They have nothing to do with your sister, or--" her phone's alarm interrupts her reasoning, and she lets out a groan. "I'm sorry, I'm gonna miss my train if I don't leave now," she drags her hand away from his slowly, and jumps off her stool.

"It's okay, we can talk when you come back," Boyd promises, and Erica gives him a soft smile before leaning in for a kiss. It's slow, sweet and steadying, and it washes the worries off his mind just for long enough that he can gather his books and prepare for class without stressing over what might be happening to him. He knows it's a brief relief, but he clings to it anyways.

 

Graeme's eyebrows are raised so far up her forehead they might actually merge with her hairline at any moment. Braeden guesses her own expression probably looks something like that, too.

"I got the job with them to  _protect_  Alan. If he was ever hospitalized, I could filter any information that might raise DCO's suspicions. I had access to the research on his..." Marin hesitates, throws Braeden a glance that she can't quite read. "...anomaly." She scans through the pile of files, pulls out a bunch of X-rays and encephalograms. Braeden has only the basic medical training that the police academy provided, but she's seen enough open skulls to know that a brain isn't supposed to look like that. Marin puts the papers back in their folder before she can get a better look at it, gets back to her explanation.

"He met Jennifer... Or Julia, I don't know which one is her real name. In any case, they met because of their condition." Braeden can tell that the words are rehearsed, that Marin is leaving information out. "She was the one to tell him about DCO's experiments." Marin explains that her brother confronted her after that, demanded that she cut ties with DCO. Her refusal caused a fallout that left them at odds for almost a year.

"That is, until DCO found Julia. Jennifer." Marin makes a small waving gesture with her hand. "In any case. They were going after her, and Alan reached out to me. He..." Marin now looks at Braeden, holds her gaze. "He gave me your number, only in case of an emergency." Braeden doesn't know what to think of that, guesses Kali came up with that idea. "But I thought I could fish some information from you, so I started writing. And I tried my best to keep DCO off Julia's tracks, but--" Braeden watches Marin's throat as she swallows down the lump of guilt. "--when they brought her body into my lab, I tried to call him, and his phone was disconnected."

 

Kira stands in the doorway that separates her bathroom from the rest of the apartment for a good ten seconds, shocked into absolute stillness.

Her first thought is that whoever tried to steal her mom's research has now broken into her place, but she doubts anyone would attempt a robbery dressed like the guy who's sitting in her desk chair right now. Well, dressed might not be the right word. Undressed, more like. He's wearing only loose swimming trunks and reading glasses, holding a can of what seems to be beer in his right hand, and he's looking at her with what Kira could only describe as exasperation.

Kira hesitates for a second. She could go back into the bathroom and lock the door, she could just ask him what the hell he's doing here and hope that the answer makes some kind of sense. Or --she could grab the bottle of hand cream on the shelf by her bathroom door and throw it at the guy's head. It flies over him and luckily doesn't hit the window, bouncing off the wall instead.

"So... I guess that you can see me too?" the guy asks, California accent just like in the movies, an air of indifference that Kira can tell is forced by the tension in his shoulders and the way he's gripping the beer can. Kira takes a really, really deep breath, and finally steps out of the bathroom. "Please, tell me you... well, I-- is this Japan?"

Kira gives him an apologetic little smile --she holds her hands in front of her chest, starts tangling and untangling her fingers before she's even aware of it. "Tokyo, yeah. Where are you supposed to be?"

"Los Angeles. A second ago, I was in Los Angeles."

Suddenly, the fresh air of Tokyo's sunny but cold afternoon vanishes. Wet, sticky heat surrounds her --fluorescent lamps and the blue light of the computer screen replace the bright yellow light of the sun. Kira turns to look at the room around her, trying to decide whether she should be amazed or freaked out.

"Man, I love Lenny Kravitz," she lets out when she spots the poster hanging from the wardrobe door. The guy laughs.

 

"Scott."

He's only a couple blocks away from home when a man across the street calls his name. He turns, expecting to see one of the guys from his building --most of the students in the area are friendly with him-- but it isn't a twenty-something kid waving a peace sign his way or even any of his older neighbors. The man from his vision walks up to him at a calm pace.

"Scott, I'm glad to finally meet you."


End file.
